Is everyone in America illiterate today? Why the hell doesn’t the author know how to correctly use apostrophes? It’s mortifying.
Thats’ jus’t how things’ are thes’e days.
Auto-error, formerly known as autocorrect.
Answering your hypothetical, yes 80% are illiterate.
Meanwhile, these sorts of decisions are why we voted for President Trump.
I'm sure the author would blame auto-correct. I blame laziness. Not taking the time to proof read their work.
Happens here on FR all the time.
The justices’ declined to hear the groups’ ...
+++++
I wonder myself about this sort of obvious grammatical error. But I’ve just learned that a, b, c, and d is also OK. Not when I went to school. Should be a, b, c and d.
But who am I to judge? Probably poor editing of automated word processor “correction” generated text.
Maybe not everyone, but the majority, yes.
In my opinion, the most difficult apostrophe situation is “its” and “it’s.” It is difficult to remember which is which. So my personal rule is, never use the contraction, never use the apostrophe.
Failure of or lack of copyeditor.