Its Unfortunate

The Apostrophe Protection Society is shutting down.  It's a group that for 18 years has been devoted to teaching people correct apostrophe use.  It's closing for a number of reasons, but part of it is due to failure.  As the group's leader John Richards admits, "We [...] have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won."

It seems the biggest problem is the lack of apostrophes.  People add an "s" to a proper noun and leave it alone, figuring that's enough to show possession.

Of course, there's the common problem of people adding apostrophes where they don't belong.  There are a number of situations when this arises--a pretty common one is people using "it's" when it's meant to be possessive.

In general, though, how important is the apostrophe?  It's a fascinating punctuation mark that can stand in for the omission of one or more letters, or create a possessive.  But if we dropped it, would anybody be confused?

George Bernard Shaw, feeling them unnecessary, eschewed apostrophes, writing "dont" and "wouldnt" and so on.  You notice it because it's odd, but you understand perfectly what he's communicating.  And if I drove by a McDonald's and it was spelled McDonalds, would I even notice?

In other words, perhaps there are so many errors because the apostrophe is hardly a make or break punctuation mark.  Perhaps we're in a period of transformation, and a century hence it'll hardly be used.  Shouldn't people be allowed to stop using punctuation if it doesn't fulfill a purpose?  I can't say it would be the worst thing.  Or maybe everything I say is cant.