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The apostrophe may die out because of sloppy grammar on social media, researchers suggest.
They say online platforms such as Twitter, which limit the number of characters per post, mean users are getting into the habit of dropping punctuation.
Casualties include the possessive apostrophe in plural nouns – such as ‘cats’ paws’ – or those which replace a letter, such as in ‘couldn’t’ for could not and ‘shouldn’t’ for should not.
The study is the biggest into how speech and writing has evolved since the spread of technology from the 1990s.
They say online platforms such as Twitter, which limit the number of characters per post, mean users are getting into the habit of dropping punctuation
Researchers looked at 100 million words to analyse trends and found casual and ungrammatical language has become more prevalent in the last 30 years.
Dr Vaclav Brezina, who led the Lancaster University, study said: ‘We have experienced dramatic changes in technology, which
