This is the unfortunately
not the last post I’ll be doing on
punctuation. I didn’t expect to have to write six posts, but there are a lot of
punctuation marks to cover. I'd rather not have a really long post covering both apostrophes and quotation marks, so, today, we’ll be discussing apostrophes, and on
Friday, we’ll look at quotation marks. And then that will truly be the end of punctuation. We can move onto other, more exciting things, like grammar and common mistakes in writing.
Apostrophes
In the
English language, the apostrophe serves three purposes: the marking of the omission
of one or more letters, the marking of possessive case, and the marking as
plural of written items that are not words established in written English
(though this last one is debatable; I don’t use apostrophes in this way, but
more on that later). The apostrophe is different than the closing single quotation
mark, though they share the same symbol.
An
apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters, normally letters,
as in contractions (can’t instead of cannot, don’t instead of do not),
abbreviations (gov’t in place of government), indicating omitted numbers
(’70s instead of 1970s), dialect or archaic language (‘bout instead of about, ‘less instead of unless, and ‘twas instead
of it was), and when the normal for
of an inflection seems awkward or unnatural (KO’d rather than KOed). I’m
going to take a moment here to strongly suggest against using dialectal apostrophes in fiction. There are often much better ways to suggest someone from
the South or someone of lower education, and it should be noted that, here in
the South, even educated people use truncated language. I know I do. So, please,
if you intend on including a character or narrator who uses regional dialect or
has a lack of education, don’t depend on truncated dialogue.
Possessive
apostrophe:
The
apostrophe is also used to indicate possession, distinguishing possessive singular
forms from simple plural forms, and both of those from possessive plural forms.
There are several rules for apostrophes, so stick with me. If your eyes start to
glaze over, I totally understand, but this is important stuff to know. Too many
people misuse apostrophes, and possessions misuse seems to be the leader.
Possessive
personal pronouns serving as noun-equivalents or adjective-equivalents, do not
use an apostrophe, even when they end in the
letter s, such as ours, yours, his, hers, its, theirs, and
whose. Other pronouns, singular nouns
not ending in s, and plural nouns not
ending in s all take ’s in the possessive. For example: someone’s bicycle, a cat’s toys, women’s
clothing. Plural nouns already ending in s take only an apostrophe after the pre-existing s when the possessive is formed, such as
three cats’ toys.
Singular and compound nouns:
For most
singular nouns, the ending ’s is
added, as in the cat’s whiskers. If a
singular noun ends with an s-sound,
practice varies as to whether to add ’s or
the apostrophe alone. A widely accepted practice is to follow whichever spoken
form is judged better: the boss’s shoes,
Mrs. Jones’ hat (or Mrs. Jones’s hat if that spoken form is preferred).
This usually differs between writers. In fact, I cursed myself in my book by
giving a character a last name ending in s.
I ended up using the ’s ending to
indicate possession because it sounded better, even though there were three s’s in a row. Compound nouns follow the
same method: the Attorney-General’s husband;
this Minister for Justice’s intervention; her father-in-law’s new wife.
Plural nouns:
When the
noun is a normal plural, with an added s,
no extra s is added in the
possessive, such as pens’ caps and students’ reports rather than pens’s caps and students’s reports. If the plural is not one that is formed by
adding s, an s is added for the possessive, after the apostrophe: children’s hats, women’s hairdresser, some
people’s eyes. A few English nouns have plurals that are not spelled with a
final s but end in an s- or z-sound: mice (plural of mouse), dice (plural of die), pence (plural of penny). The possessive
of these plurals are formed by adding an apostrophe and an s in the standard way: five
mice’s nests were found, the dice’s last roll was a seven, his few pence’s
value was not enough. Generally, these would be reworded, since they read
awkwardly as is.
Joint and separate possession:
A
distinction is made between joint possession (Jason and Sue’s emails: the emails of both Jason and Sue), and separate
possession (Jason’s and Sue’s emails:
both the emails of Jason and the emails of Sue). Style guides differ in how to
punctuate this sort of possession, but it seems the norm for joint possession
is to give the final noun the possessive inflection and in separate possession,
all the possessors have possessive inflection, unless of course a pronoun is
involved. When a possessor is indicated by a pronoun, then for both join and
separate possession, all of the possessors have possessive inflection (his and her emails; his, her, and Anthea’s
emails; Jason’s and her emails; his and Sue’s emails; etc.). There are
exceptions, but for your most basic usage, these rules will do.
With other punctuation and compounds with
pronouns:
If the word
or compound includes a punctuation mark, an apostrophe and an s are still added in the usual way: Westward Ho!’s railway station; Washington,
D.C.’s museums. If the word or compound already includes a possessive
apostrophe, it creates a double possessive: Tom’s
sisters’ careers; the head of marketing’s husband’s preference. Some style
guides advise rephrasing. If an original apostrophe or ’s exists at the end of the word, it is left by itself to do double
duty: Our employees are better paid than
McDonald’s employees; Standard & Poor’s indexes are widely used.
Time, money, and similar:
An
apostrophe is used in time and money references: one hour’s respite, two weeks’ holiday, a dollar’s worth, five pounds’
worth, etc. This follows the standard punctuation as stated above.
Use in
forming certain plurals:
An
apostrophe is used by some writers to form a plural for abbreviations,
acronyms, and symbols where adding just s
rather than ’s might leave things
ambiguous or inelegant. It is general acceptable to use apostrophes to show
plurals of single lower-case letters, such as be sure to dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Some style guides would
prefer to use a change of font, such as dot
your is and cross your ts. In fact, I used this in my book: The engineer curled their ds and looped
their ts (in the original text,
the italicization is opposite, with the d
and t italicized and the rest not
italicized). Some style guides rule that upper case letters need no apostrophe
(I got three As in my exams) except
when there is a risk of misreading, such as at the start of a sentence: A’s are the highest marks achievable in
these exams. In recent years, style guides have ruled that apostrophes are
no longer needed for groups of years (1960s,
1800s, ’80s, ’90s) or in forming the plural of numbers (1000s of years). The apostrophe is also
not needed in pluralizing symbols: that
page has too many &s and #s on it.
Apostrophe misuse:
Never ever use an apostrophe
to indicate the plural form of a noun ending in a vowel. For example, banana’s, folio’s, logo’s, pasta’s, and apple’s are incorrect plural forms.
This happens a lot with non-English native speakers. Just remember, apostrophes
are used for three reasons, and three reasons only: omitting letters,
possession, and in the few exceptions listed in the paragraph above.
So that should give you a basic understand of when to use apostrophes and how to use them properly. Misuse of apostrophes is one of those mistakes that irks me every time I see it. So don't do it. That is all.
Happy writing!
So that should give you a basic understand of when to use apostrophes and how to use them properly. Misuse of apostrophes is one of those mistakes that irks me every time I see it. So don't do it. That is all.
Happy writing!
I see even native speakers of English using the apostrophe to indicate plural nouns. For a second, I think it's a possessive, before I figure it out.
ReplyDeleteI need to direct my middle dd to your blog. She's working on getting apostrophes right - but it's a long road!
ReplyDelete