Apostrophes can seem like trivial, petty little things, and hardly worth the trouble they cause! But they are quite important. Using them well can make your writing a lot clearer, and using them poorly is a really bad look.
So take a few moments to make sure you’ve got a handle on apostrophes. At the end, I have a simple test for you.
1. Ownership
A major use of apostrophes is to indicate possession, or ownership. For example, the bone of the dog is the dog’s bone. If we leave out the apostrophe in dog’s bone, we have dogs, indicating the plural—that is, many dogs—which will cause momentary confusion for the reader.
Exceptions
There are some important exceptions to watch out for. Tradition dictates that these possessives don’t have an apostrophe: hers, its, yours, ours, theirs, his.
These are known as possessive pronouns. You just have to remember that they don’t have an apostrophe! (See below for more on its vs it’s.)
Dealing with words ending in s
What if it’s the dog of James? James already ends in s. The answer depends on how you prefer to say it aloud. Either of these is fine: James’ dog or James’s dog.
Ownership and plurals
The dog’s bone means the bone of the dog—that is, just of one dog. What about the bone of the dogs? Dogs already has an s at the end. The answer is simple: just place the apostrophe after the s: the dogs’ bone.
Watch out for some plurals. The plural of company is companies. So we get the company’s website (that is, the website of the company), but the companies’ websites (or the websites of the companies).
Family names can be tricky. The Jones family can be referred to as the Joneses. In that case, you’d refer to the Joneses’ dog, with the apostrophe at the end.
Also be careful with words like men, women and children. Because these are already plural, you just add ’s as usual. For example, the men’s team played the women’s team.
Continue reading %4 Simple Things to Remember about Apostrophes%
by Ralph Mason via SitePoint
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