Please! Please tell
me about apostrophes
When should I use them?
1. We use them to show that someone owns something
Usually an apostrophe [ ’ ] and an s are what you need. It's not even difficult to decide where to put the apostrophe.
I must take Jill's book back.
Jill owns the book.
He keeps an eye on William's house.
William owns the house.
The tall man over there is the child's father.
The child owns the father.
The city's new mayor is the youngest ever.
The city owns the mayor.
I got it straight from the horse's mouth.
The horse owns the mouth.
(Perhaps not all these show actual ownership, but for this purpose we treat them as if they do.) Where does the apostrophe come? After the owner.
What if the owner is plural? Look at this passage.
We try to encourage gardening in this school. Here is the infants' section, over there is the primary boys' part, and the next one is the primary girls' section. I'm afraid the teachers' garden is still in the future.
Where does the apostrophe come? After the owner (or in this case, owners).
Here's another poor example:
Parent and Teacher's Committee
What's wrong? Does this committee really only have one parent and one teacher? That's doubtful. To correct it, write:
Parents and Teachers' Committee
What about the words that have odd plurals? There is no problem with kids and boys and gardens (well, no punctuation problems). But what about child? Lady? City? Man? Woman? We make some changes and get children, ladies, cities, men, women. Where do we put the apostrophe now? After the owner again. That gives us children's, ladies', cities', men's and women's.
Longer words that end in y, like opportunity, identityand the rest, seldom need to show ownership, and if they do we lengthen the whole thing, and write, for example, the advantages of these opportunities, rather than the clumsy these opportunities' advantages.
What about when two people own something? Do we add an apostrophe to each name? No. We put an apostrophe on the second.
Jack and Harry's dog became a favourite.
Do you know where Rick and Emma's flat is?
So there seems to be one major rule, and it's easy to remember. The apostrophe always follows the owner. Check it out and see if it fits all cases. There may be an s after the apostrophe (children's) or there may not (cities’) but the apostrophe always follows the owner. The only exception is its, and for that little exception, see page 60.
What about a word, or maybe a person's name, that ends in s?There may never be agreement on this one. Rules (and exceptions to them) have been made and changed more than once, but here is one suggestion for a solution. It may not please all the rule-makers, but it is a suggestion. Suppose you want to indicate that something is owned by Jess, or Ross, or Chris, or perhaps John Davis or Jenny Harris or Mr Coroneos, or anyone else whose name ends in s. Let's take a cricket bat owned by Thomas.
Try saying the thing aloud. Do you really feel comfortable saying Thomas' bat, (pronounced Thomasbat), giving a total of three syllables? Does Thomas's bat sound better (with four pronounced syllables?) If that's the way we say it, then it seems logical to write it that way.
Let's try a one-syllabled name. Do we say Chris' book(pronounced Chrisbook)? Or do we say Chris's book? If we say Chris's book, then let's write it that way.
If we follow this suggestion with given names, we can do it with surnames. So we will get Phil Douglas's idea, Judy Burns's enterprise, and even Mr Trass's shop. But doesn't Trass's give us a triple s? No. The apostrophe prevents that.
The suggestion here for dealing with names that end in sor es is simply, If you pronounce it, then write it. It may not cover all cases, but it may help. For instance, you wouldn't write the Lewis' live here. The apostrophe in this case means nothing. And the correct plural for Lewis is Lewises. Spell the name the way you would pronounce it: Lewises. If we want to mention something owned by the Paderewski family (the Paderewskis) or the Jayawardena family (the Jayawardenas) or the Haynes family or the Wilkes family, we can always try to restructure the sentence and avoid the apostrophe problem by writing the house where the Paderewski family lives. We can even do this with the Haynes family and the Wilkes family, if we can't cope with the idea of saying Hayneses or the Wilkeses (both of which are acceptable).
Popular usage is winning out, as it always does eventually in language, so this small book doesn't give hard-and-fast rules for writing plural and possessive forms of people's names.
2. We use apostrophes to join words together to
make a shorter form
Here is another use for apostrophes. When we want to write the way we speak, or when we want to write informally, we need to know how to write those shortened forms of common expressions that we use all the time in conversation: things like I'm, she'll, won't, they're, he's, wouldn't and all the rest.
What does the apostrophe do here? It shows we've left out a letter or two, in order to put on paper something that tries to mimic what we actually say. How do we decide what letters to omit?
Here are the conventional spellings of the common ones. Most of them are fairly predictable, even fairly logical.
| I have > I've | he is, he has > he's |
| I had, I would > I'd | he had, he would > he'd |
| I am > I'm | he will > he'll |
| I will > I'll |
| we have > we've | they have > they've |
| we had, we would > we'd | they had or would > they'd |
| we are > we're | they are > they're |
| we will > we'll | they will > they'll |
| you have > you've | it is > it's |
| you had, you would > you'd | it had, it would > it'd |
| you are > you're | it will > it'll |
| you will > you'll |
| will not > won't | is not > isn't |
| do not > don't | was not > wasn't |
| shall not > shan't | were not > weren't |
| cannot > can't | are not > aren't |
| must not > mustn't | must have > must've |
| should not > shouldn't | should have > should've |
| would not > wouldn't | would have > would've |
| could not > couldn't | could have > could've |
| have not > haven't | had not > hadn't |
| did not > didn't |
We can even say and write wouldn't've, shouldn't've, couldn't've.
But, what about this sentence?
The platoon had lost its commander and was surrounded.
You notice that its has no apostrophe. Why? Did we forget it? No. It doesn't need one. We only use an apostrophe for it's when it means it is. And for that, go to the top of this page.
Its tells us that it owns something:
Look at the dog, still chewing its old bone.
It's means it is:
Please, please tell me it's not true.
It's a fake. It's only plastic.
Government departments and government officials, especially those who decide on the content of public notices and signage, seem to have decided against apostrophes altogether. It has been said that they do this for clarity, that apostrophes clutter the signs. It is now decades since the apostrophes were deleted from place names such as Frenchs Forest, Delaneys Creek, Coxs River, St Helens. One place name that has been allowed to keep its apostrophe is Break o' Day Municipality in Tasmania.
It is sad that the authorities seem to have decided that punctuation generally is a bit of a chore. If you want to write clear English, don't follow their example.
When shouldn't I use them?
There's a big don't for apostrophes. Don't, please don't use them in plurals. Not even in names.
There's also no need for an apostrophe in expressions like the 90s, or the 1850s, and if you write such expressions in words, then the spelling follows ordinary spelling patterns. Examples: the forties, the nineties, the twenties.