But he does have an ear for language; which is sort of handy because a nose for language would be pretty much useless except for those pens with perfumed ink.

He once shirt-fronted me as to why I wrote never instead of n’ever. He reasoned that the apostrophe signalled the omitted letters of ‘not ever’: the Middle English derivation “ne” (not) + “afre” (ever) clearly signals two words.

Hence, “never” needs an apostrophe to denote the missing letters (like “can’t” or “don’t”); otherwise why have rules he queried, with a typical smug shrug and a “meh!”

The annoying thing about apostrophes is that they can also show ownership and this complexity is a difficult duality for many of us to grasp.

I got an invoice the other day which stated: “Bill’s to be paid within 30 days”: Uncle Saul would read that as meaning that he had to find someone called Bill who is to be given some dosh (Bill, is to be paid).

But you could also get possessive about it and wonder, if Bill’s invoice is due in a month, when is mine due?

As every schoolboy knows, the safest thing to do is smack an apostrophe on every word that ends in an s.

Like a broken clock, you’ll be correct at least twice a day, but that doesn’t help with contractions that don’t end in s: most people would get from “cannot” to “can’t” easily enough but what about “not one thing” – should that be n’o’thing?

Actually, possessive apostrophes are very sexist. They derive from a time when women couldn’t own anything and were themselves seen as the property of men. “Bob’s wife” is a contraction of “Bob, his wife”; it defines the wife in terms of her property status – she’s not Fred’s, she’s Bob’s.

“Sue’s husband” is thus absurd (“Sue, his husband”) unless it’s that bloke called Sue from the Johnny Cash song who has a husband (but the plebiscite is still out on that one).

It gets even messier when Bob gives his wife a hat with a flower on it which, of course, she can’t own because everything belongs to him and “Bob’s wife’s hat’s flower” means: Bob, his wife, his hat, his flower.

It’s a wonder that Bob’s not bonkers keeping track of his goods and chattels but you can see why apostrophes got popular – they’re quicker!

Indeed, with possessive apostrophes being this sexist, it’s a wonder that they haven’t yet incurred the wrath of the Greens, the ABC and Waleed Aly as something that celebrates our shameful history and that blokes should start apologising for.

Victor Borge had the perfect answer for the whole problem of what to do about punctuation marks – the whole kit and caboodle of them; he proposed that we vocalise them.

Borge devised a sound for every dot, squiggle and slash that writing uses and vocalised them as pops, whooshes, squeaks and creaks.

Zulus already do this partially and have a bunch of whistles, clicks, grunts and glottal stops that they vocalise – school punctuation lessons in the local Kraal often sound like a typewriter with bronchitis.

At least, though, this would prove Uncle Saul either right or wrong about his apostrophe theory. He deserves something to go in his favour for once. He sold off the hyenas at a loss and bought 100 mules to breed – I should tip him off, but I’d n’ever be so cruel.