Okay, I've reached my breaking point with this folks. I don't know where this trend started, but it seems like over the course of the last 5 years, everyone on the internet collectively forgot how the fuck to properly use an apostrophe, and moreover, when not to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ApostropheIn English, it serves three purposes: the omission of one or more letters (as in the contraction of does not to doesn’t); the marking of possessive cases (as in the cat’s whiskers); the marking as plural of written items that are not words established in English orthography (as in P's and Q's, the late 1950's).
This means the only case in which a plural is an acceptable circumstance for using an apostrophe is when it is the plural of something not generally considered a word. Things like "thoraxes" and "legions" and "corporations" do not fall into this category. Words that you utter on a daily basis do not fall into this category. In fact, examples of what do fall into this category are so rare that I'm having difficulty coming up with another one besides the one used in the example above.
Another quote:
Incorrect use of the apostrophe is widespread,[47][48] and the abuse of the punctuation mark generates heated debate. The British founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society earned a 2001 Ig Nobel prize for "efforts to protect, promote and defend the differences between plural and possessive".[49] A 2004 report by OCR, a British examination board, stated that "the inaccurate use of the apostrophe is so widespread as to be almost universal".[50] A 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use the apostrophe correctly.[48]
Seriously folks, that guy is on my list of heroes. His efforts go a fraction of the way every day towards the ultimate goal of preventing me from spontaneous migraines every time I read text online.
/end rant
Sorry, but that's been building up for a while. Not targeted at anyone in particular, but a shotgun post for everyone--I even catch myself doing it once in a while simply because my fingers get ahead of my brain and I have to take a step back, flog myself, don the hair shirt, and go back to what I was doing a bit more deliberately.