Ashley Campbell's Writer's Log
Apostrophe abuse
(or apostrophe rules made easy)
For some reason I’m not entirely sure of, the simple apostrophe has the ability to leave perfectly intelligent human beings feeling grammatically inadequate — should I use an apostrophe? Shouldn’t I? Does anyone care, anyway?
Well, yes, we do. And nothing riles us quite like apostrophe abuse.
Using apostrophes is remarkably simple. Except for the very rare exception, they denote just one of two things:
- Contraction (a missed letter or two)
- Possession (something or someone “owns” something else).
“I’ve”, for example, is a contraction of “I have”. The “h” and the “a” have been missed out, so we put an apostrophe in their place. Likewise don’t (do not) shouldn’t (should not) and so on. The apostrophe goes in place of the missed letters and voila! You’ve done it right.
Using apostrophes to show possession is also quite easy: the ’s shows that the next word belongs to the word in front of the apostrophe — the children’s toys (toys that belong to the children), the shop’s window (a window that belongs to the shop) and so on.
Do not use apostrophes to denote plurals — that’s what the “s” is for, you don’t need anything else. Greengrocers, if you are ever tempted to write a sign along the lines of “Tomato’s $4.95/kg” don’t! You are making many of your customers squirm, and some may even avoid you out of righteous indignation.
Plurals are straightforward, if you just remember this:
- The only time to use an apostrophe with a plural is when that plural something “owns” something else (the potatoes’ skins, the tomatoes’ stalks).
- Put the apostrophe after the word that does the owning.
The boys’ toys (apostrophe after “boys”) belong to several boys, but the boy’s toys (apostrophe after “boy”) belong to just one; the horses’ hooves mean we are talking about several horses, the horse’s hooves involve just one animal.
There, easy, isn’t it? And no apostrophes were abused in the writing of this log.
©Ashley Campbell, 2009 |
