Communication Breakdown

In September 2018, the linguist Ellen Jovin set up a table near an exit to the 72nd Street and Broadway subway station in New York City and invited passersby to ask her questions about grammar. Her first query, she writes in Rebel with a Clause, was a nasty "spousal apostrophe dispute." Most people would have folded up their table and headed indoors after that, but Jovin and her husband Brandt took the show on the road. By now, they may have sparked spousal apostrophe disputes in Hawaii, Alaska, and Connecticut, too.