I was leafing my way through Chapters yesterday at lunch, avoiding the rain, a dripping brolly hanging from my hand as I was trying to fumble with the crisp and dry hardcovers. I noticed that everyone’s favorite cynical reporter slash social commentator has published a book. I don’t know if it’s new or not, but I had never seen it before and — having a spiffy cover — it attracted my attention. The oft-interesting Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes had managed to compile his years worth of quirky observations (a televised blog, one might call it) into something resembling a cohesive non-fiction novel. An occasional fan, I delicately picked up the forty-dollar tome — attempting to avoid dripping my umbrella juice onto it — and opened it up to a random page.

Don’t get me wrong: Mr. Rooney has some interesting stories, I am sure. However, the first thing that caught my attention was not his witty slashings at the irritating Martha Stewart, or his criticism of general politics, but rather his glaring lack of the simple, often useful, apostrophes. Yes, apostrophes — the little hangy, half-quote stuck between a whole word and its fragmented tag-along. I don’t know if it was an editing decision, a layout preference, or just the personal writing preference of the colorful observist, but there are no apostrophes in his book — or at least none that I could find in my brief encounter with its pages.

My question, and maybe someone can answer this, is why not? As a writer, it might just be a point of curiousity, annoyance, or preturbation — but whatever, it is bugging the heck out of me. It was not that he avoided the use of contracted words or dispossessed his nouns from each other, but simply that when he did, he just simply did not use any apostrophes, spelling words such as cant, dont, couldve, shouldve, and Im just exactly as I have just done myself.

What gives?