by Eddie Aderne

“Germans decry influence of English as ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ gets official approval
Linguistic body has relaxed rules on use of apostrophe to show possession, not traditionally correct
in German … [T]he punctuation mark [is] colloquially known as the Deppenapostroph (‘idiot’s apostrophe’) “
—The Guardian

The orthographic errors of the grocer
Have long brought English-speakers to our knees;
Nothing, meanwhile, makes Germany moroser
Than giving genitives apostrophes.

If Germans scorn our favoured punctuation,
We anglophones are poorly placed to scoff:
At least they’re still avoiding, in that nation,
Our Lebensmittelhändlersapostroph.