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[Machiavelli]

I think it's odd that the common practice is to assume a word is possessive by its apostrophe, but to assume plurals have no apostrophes.
           ^contraction, not possessive                                                              ^possessive, singular

[Telgin]

For every rule in English, there's two exceptions.  English is a pretty ugly language, and I wish it was a lot more consistent than it is.  But, the rules are the rules. 

[fqllve]

I think it's odd that the common practice is to assume a word is possessive by its apostrophe, but to assume plurals have no apostrophes.
           ^contraction, not possessive                                                              ^possessive, singular

I'm pretty sure it's because one of the most common declensions for the genitive case in Old English was "-es", so the apostrophe represents the omission of the 'e' because the ''s' is no longer applied just as a case marker. On the other hand, 'it's' has an apostrophe because it's a contraction of course, and I would guess that 'its' has none because it comes from hit/his, so there's no reason for there to be one.

But yeah English orthography is a mess. I usually just advise people to do whatever they think best unless they're worried about people thinking they're wrong. It's not like you can't figure it out anyway. The only place where the apostrophe is really important is in plural possessives. However, if you do care about being right, The Chicago Manual of Style suggests the use of the apostrophe when an abbreviation has periods, but otherwise doesn't call for one.

[Machiavelli]

I'm pretty sure it's because Ye Olde English was herpa apostrophe derpa flim flam jello pudding.

You sound like my wife.  That is way, way over my head. 
Thanks for citing something concrete to clear it up, though.

[Trapezohedron]

Let's bring up the case with one of my most hated symbols of punctuation to ever exist. How does one use a semicolon (;) properly?

[The Darkling Wolf]

IIRC, it's basically used when you have two short sentences, each of which can stand as their own sentence, but you want to link them without using a conjunction.

Then again, it's been a long-ass time since I did GCSE english.

[Machiavelli]

It's used to join to independent clauses; they're basically clauses that could be joined by an 'and' or 'or'.

[Simmura McCrea]

Let's bring up the case with one of my most hated symbols of punctuation to ever exist. How does one use a semicolon ( properly?

At the end of most every line.

Wait, you're talking about English, not C++. Nevermind.

[The Darkling Wolf]

Pff, your advice is horrible and would have people posting lines such as
if (m.ter(examx, examy) == t_floor);
add_msg("Yup. That's a floor.");

You gotta be clear about this mang! Clear!

[Simmura McCrea]

I said most every line. Not all of them.

[The Darkling Wolf]

But you did not define which lines qualified as most.

[Simmura McCrea]

I just got up so I couldn't be bothered and I'd probably miss some.

[fqllve]

I'm pretty sure it's because Ye Olde English was herpa apostrophe derpa flim flam jello pudding.

You sound like my wife.  That is way, way over my head. 
Thanks for citing something concrete to clear it up, though.

You can look up any OE grammar and see that it's the case but here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar#Strong_nouns. I know that's Wikipedia, but the declensions match what's listed in both my OE grammars (Bright's Old English Grammar, and A Guide to Old English by Campbell) so it is correct, but I can't find any really solid sources for OE grammar online, sorry. Here's another with the same declensions listed. Either of those books I listed would be a good source, though.

As for the CMS, I don't think there's an online version of that so I can't cite it. I can cite the NY Times style guide.

Use apostrophes for plurals of abbreviations that have capital letters and periods: M.D.’s, C.P.A.’s. Also use apostrophes for plurals formed from single letters: He received A’s and B’s on his report card. Mind your p’s and q’s.

But do not use apostrophes for plurals of abbreviations without periods, or for plurals formed from figures: TVs, PCs, DVDs; 1990s, 747s, size 7s.

I do not think there are any online sources for the development of the genitive and plural '-es' into what we have today, but you can check out David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. At some points throughout history both forms appeared with and without the apostrophe but it seems likely (and this is just speculation) that the plural dropped it completely because it is A) a slightly more common grammatical feature, and B) to distinguish the two.

You can see why I didn't cite anything though because citing books on the internet isn't very helpful and makes you a jerk.

[dreadmullet]

It makes me physically angry when someone uses apostrophes like "two banana's". I just can't comprehend why people would think that way.

As for abbreviations, I will always remember this post as an excellent example of why plurals and abbreviations don't mix:

Oh, and as I appear to have derailed on apostrophes, here's something doubtless controversial (because some respected Stylebooks say "yes, always", some respected Stylebooks say "no, never", and others go "yes/no, but do whatever you think works in context)...  No apostrophes for pluralising Initialisms, please.  Many people work at PCs, installing software from CDs or DVDs, writing their CVs and such, with nary a need for apostrophes to distinguish those letters from the PCS (possibly the Public and Commercial Services union), CDS (Cockpit Display System), DVDS (Digital Video Distribution System) or CVS (Concurrent Versions System), and still letting them work on employment notes left on the PC's hard drive or readable from any given CD's or DVD's surface (or, indeed, all their CDs' and DVDs' data, if they have a collection) while improving their CV's layout.

[Strife26]

For every rule in English, there's two exceptions.  English is a pretty ugly language, and I wish it was a lot more consistent than it is.  But, the rules are the rules. 

English is a beautiful language, with a flexibility and vocabulary second to none because we're so good at stealing stuff. I'll happily trade some complex and nonsensical rules for it.

Kinda reading Our Marvelous Native Tongue: Life and Times of the English Language right now, so it might've colored my opinion a tad bit.