We’re in a horrible state of affairs with some people and their misconceptions about possessives and plurals.
Let’s set aside the fact that nearly all of us know the team’s name is the Commanders (no apostrophe!). Donald Trump decided to use “Whatever” as a singular noun and tried to make it plural by adding an apostrophe and an ending -s. That method is, as most of you will know, the way a singular noun not ending in -s is typically made possessive.
As most people learn in elementary or at least middle or high school, very rarely do we create plurals with apostrophes in standard American English. Exceptions include standalone letters (as in “I made all A’s on my report card”), years (as in “I grew up in the 1980’s”) symbols (as in #’s), and numbers (as in “The kindergarten boy can can count well into the 60’s).
To be candid, I’m hating Trump’s lead sentence overall here because the pronoun their could be problematic, too, depending on how one reads the sentence. But I’ll give leeway there. If I were still teaching high school, I would make “Whatever’s” a teachable moment in the first week or so of the new school year and include it on a test.
Never stop learning,
Erin
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