Apostrophes
Perhaps no little piece of punctuation is as horribly missused as the poor apostrophe. It is used all over the place and often it doesn't belong.
So here, students, are the only places you should be using apostrophes:
The two most common errors that people make with apostrophes are by trying to make words and numbers plural and using them in possessive pronouns. Possessive pronouns that end in "s," (yours, his, its, theirs, ours and hers) do NOT get an apostrophe. The worst offender is its. Its is the possessive of it. It's is a contraction of "it is." Some people are so bad with apostrophes that they will attempt to pluralize any old noun with an apostrophe (The lady has six cat's), but mostly people get that you don't do that. What many people don't realize is wrong is using an apostrophe to pluralize numbers and words that are made of capital letters. How often have you seen a sign in a store advertising "100's" of bargains or someone writing about being born in the "80's"? These situations are ALWAYS incorrect. It's 100s of bargains and '80s (the apostrophe before the number replaces the 19). The following sentence is correct usage of apostrophes:
Founded in the '20s, HMV's chain of stores has sold 1,000,000s of tapes, LPs, CDs and DVDs.
The first apostrophe replaces the 19 in 1920s, the second makes HMV possessive and the plural of 1,000,000, LP, CD and DVD do NOT use an apostrophe. If apostrophes had appeared anywhere else in the above sentence, they would have been mistakes.
Now that you know where the apostrophes belong, think of all the ink you'll save by not having all those unnecessary ones all over the place.
So here, students, are the only places you should be using apostrophes:
- Contractions. Any time you are omitting letters from a word. Rock 'n' roll, twelve o'clock, don't, won't ne'er-do-well, and so on.
- Possessives. When indicating that one thing belongs to a noun or proper noun. Dave's car, the car's engine, etc.
- Making lower case letters plural, as in phrases like "mind your p's and q's" or "cross your t's and dot your i's." Even this use isn't completely accepted. Some style guides recommend a font change instead of the apostrophe: mind your ps and qs.
The two most common errors that people make with apostrophes are by trying to make words and numbers plural and using them in possessive pronouns. Possessive pronouns that end in "s," (yours, his, its, theirs, ours and hers) do NOT get an apostrophe. The worst offender is its. Its is the possessive of it. It's is a contraction of "it is." Some people are so bad with apostrophes that they will attempt to pluralize any old noun with an apostrophe (The lady has six cat's), but mostly people get that you don't do that. What many people don't realize is wrong is using an apostrophe to pluralize numbers and words that are made of capital letters. How often have you seen a sign in a store advertising "100's" of bargains or someone writing about being born in the "80's"? These situations are ALWAYS incorrect. It's 100s of bargains and '80s (the apostrophe before the number replaces the 19). The following sentence is correct usage of apostrophes:
Founded in the '20s, HMV's chain of stores has sold 1,000,000s of tapes, LPs, CDs and DVDs.
The first apostrophe replaces the 19 in 1920s, the second makes HMV possessive and the plural of 1,000,000, LP, CD and DVD do NOT use an apostrophe. If apostrophes had appeared anywhere else in the above sentence, they would have been mistakes.
Now that you know where the apostrophes belong, think of all the ink you'll save by not having all those unnecessary ones all over the place.