monkeys and ponies

Mine, unfortunately, have already had 16 years of US education (except for the occasional Canadian or ESL students, who usually don't have that problem, but can have others), so it's next to impossible to drill it out of them. I tell them not to use the apostrophe shotgun -- you know, the one that randomly fires apostrophes into their papers. I also suggest that if they know they have a problem with apostrophes -- as indicated by the BIG RED CIRCLES I put around them -- they should do a search for every apostrophe in their papers during the editing stage and reflect on each one.