Apostrophe
Apostrophes: Its or It’s?
The most frequent apostrophe error is to confuse the possessive pronoun its with the contraction it’s.
Overcoming this apostrophe error, for many, boils down simply to memorizing the rule; however, if you recall the rule for pronouns, you know that s-ending pronouns (hers, ours, theirs—and, yes, its) do not take apostrophes.
You might also recall that contractions do take apostrophes, to replace some missing letter or group of letters.
The contraction it’s and the possessive pronoun its follow these two general rules. By learning these larger rules and applying them, you will have no trouble with differentiating between its and it’s.
For people who prefer to memorize, here are the rules for its versus it’s:
1. The contraction takes an apostrophe.
Example: “It’s a beautiful day.”
2. The possessive form does not take an apostrophe.
Example: “The duck tended to its young.”
We all have to admit that -s ending words can be confusing at times, and that apostrophes complicate things even further. So, what happens when we need to add an apostrophe to a word that already ends in -s? The next article answers that question. To read that article, click this link:
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of 
effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Why are Apostrophes Important?
She's a clever dog.
Instead of lecturing you, dear reader, on the importance of the apostrophe, I would like to share an example from the book, Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation, by Richard Lederer and John Shore. I use this example with my students, but I also share it with anyone who expresses doubts over the importance of this subtle but significant element of the English language.
Consider these two sentences. Note that they have only one difference:
A clever dog knows its master.
A clever dog knows it’s master.
So, which dog is smarter? It’s food for thought.
Well, that’s it for apostrophes. Next up is the comma, that other squiggle that haunts the dreams of many a freshman English student. Here is the link to that series of articles:
Christoph
er Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Apostrophes: Odds & Ends
Placeholder Apostrophes
When discussing how apostrophes are used in contractions, I mentioned that the apostrophe’s role in the contraction is to replace missing letters. For example, in the contraction, can’t, the apostrophe takes the place of the letter O in the word, not. In the contraction I’ll, the apostrophe takes the place of the letters wi- of the word will. Simple enough.
The apostrophe serves this role as well in non-contractions. This apostrophe usage occurs in writing that attempts to represent slang or local dialect (for example, Mark Twain’s fiction). Consider the adjective, friggin’. The apostrophe here takes the place of that final –g. This applies to any word in which the writer chooses to truncate the –ing ending.
Example:
Bob: What are you doin’?
Tom: I’m goin’ to the store. What you doin’?
Bob: Nothin’ much, man.
The apostrophe can even replace letters at the beginning of a word (‘tis, ‘twas, etc.) Or, consider the word o’clock, which literally means “of the clock.” The apostrophe here takes the place of the f in “of” and the article, “the.”
Logically enough, we might call such apostrophes, “placeholder apostrophes” (although the Punctuation Gods may have some other name for them). As its name implies, a placeholder apostrophe serves the purpose of replacing a letter or group of letters missing from some word or phrase.
The placeholder apostrophe applies as well to numbers. Suppose I am writing about the 1990s, but I want to express it with fewer digits. I would say, the ‘90s. (And, yes, I could also say, the nineties.) In this case, the apostrophe takes the place of the numbers 1 and 9. (I think the presence of this placeholder apostrophe is one reason that many people tend to add an apostrophe before the –s ending.)
Apostrophes to Show Feet and Inches (if Prime Symbols are Unavailable)
One other odd use of the apostrophe is that it can serve as the symbol for feet in American measurements. We might refer to this use of the apostrophe as a prime symbol. However, an actual prime symbol is slightly different from the apostrophe, in the sense that the apostrophe is curved or angled towards the word that precedes it, while the prime symbol is perfectly vertical. Still, if you are writing in a text field where you cannot insert the prime symbol, the apostrophe will do just fine. Quotation marks (what we might call a double prime symbol) act as the symbol for inches. So, if I wanted to express the notion that Bob stands at a height of six-foot-four, I would write, “Bob is 6’4” tall.
Traditional Exceptions
Finally, I should mention traditional exceptions to the rules. Until these rules change—and I hope they do—you’ll just have to memorize them:
Tradition 1: When expressing the possessive of Biblical names ending in –s, just add an apostrophe to the end of the word, even if you would rather follow the optional rule by adding the –’s to show an additional –ez syllable. For example, if discussing the parables of Christ, you should always write,
“Jesus’ parables” (correct)
You should not write,
“Jesus’s parables” (incorrect)
Tradition 2: Some singular, non-s-ending words take only an apostrophe—with no s—to become possessive. These occur in the phrase, “for [possessive] sake.” For example, you should write,
“for appearance’ sake,” (correct)
You should not write,
“for appearance’s sake” (incorrect)
Still, if the word ends in a solid consonant sound, you should add the usual -’s ending.
Example: “For God’s sake, man, these are a lot of exceptions!”
Why have I bothered teaching you all of these points on apostrophes? (And why are you still reading about them?) Why does this odd little squiggle of a symbol that hangs over some words (and not over others) matter? To answer these burning questions, the conclusion to this series of apostrophe articles will share an amusing example.
Here is the link:
photo credit: theilr
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Placing Apostrophes in Compound Noun Possessives
If you need to write the possessive form of a compound noun, you should consider the situation of the possessive. If both nouns possess the same possession, then you should add an apostrophe + s ending only to the second word of the compound noun.
Example: Noah and Sandra’s daughter is named Claire.![Dancer Silhouettes. [Explored]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2748/4139083018_c710683e46_m.jpg)
If we added a surname to the mix, the apostrophe is moved to the end of the surname:
Example: Noah and Sandra Bennet’s daughter is named Claire.
If the two possessors each possess a separate possession, then both nouns take apostrophes.
Example: Noah’s and Sandra’s jobs are very different from one another.
In this case, we can tell from the separate apostrophes that Noah and Sandra each have different jobs. The context makes it pretty obvious. But, in some compound-noun cases the double-apostrophe structure is the only indicator of separate possessors.
Consider this sentence, for example:
Kate’s and Hugo’s children have done quite well in life.
Imagine that Kate and Hugo are not married and have separate sets of children. Because there is an apostrophe present in each name, this sentence communicates the point that these two people separately have children (all of whom share the common trait of having done well in life). If the apostrophe + s ending had only occurred in the name “Hugo,” then we would know that the sentence is discussing one group of children, and that Kate and Hugo had them together. The context given in this sentence does not make this differentiation. The apostrophe placement is our only clue.
The only rules that remain are the small, nitty-gritty details, but they are still worth knowing. The next article touches on those finer points. Here is the link:
photo credit: Cameron Cassan
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Apostrophes: What about Words that Already End in -s? What about Plural Possessives?
I have commented that writers should not use apostrophes to make nouns plural, and that they should use apostrophes to form possessives. So, how do we form a plural possessive? Which rule do we follow?
As I’m sure you know, most nouns in English are made plural by adding an –s ending to the end of the word. And, some singular words (like the names, “Chris” or “Socrates”) already end in –s. How do we make those words possessive, since they already have –s endings? And, where do we place the apostrophe?
The short answer is that you simply add the apostrophe after the –s ending. Why?
Imagine the following situation. Imagine that the only way to make words possessive is by ending words in -’s. Now, imagine that a woman, Angela, has two sons. In a letter to a friend, Angela writes a P.S. with the following promise:
I will send you my son’s picture.
Now, if the only way to write a possessive noun—whether singular or plural—was by adding an apostrophe + s ending, then we would not know if Angela plans to send a picture of one son or a picture of both sons. She would be forced to write a completely different sentence to make her promise. She might write, “I will send you a picture that has both of my sons in it,” or, “I will send you a picture of Nathan and Peter.”
To avoid such ambiguities or drawn-out explanations, the Punctuation Gods (in their all-knowing yet anonymous wisdom) created a technique that differentiates between the possessive singular and the possessive plural. Here are the rules:
1. When writing a possessive singular, place the apostrophe before the –s ending.
Example: “I will send you my son’s picture.” (a photo of one son)
2. When writing a possessive plural, place the apostrophe after the –s ending.
Example: “I will send you my sons’ picture.” (a photo of both sons)
Exception: Irregular Plural Nouns
Some plural words do not end with the letter s. These are irregular plurals. Consider “men,” the plural of the noun, “man.” “Man” is made plural by replacing the vowel a with e. Consider “deer,” which does not undergo any change to become plural. If there is no –s ending for these plural words, how do we make them possessive?
Simple: just add an –’s ending. Consider these examples:
The men’s lockers are down the hall to the left.
Deer’s numbers will grow out of control, if not for hunters.
The first example is simple: the vowel e lets us know that the possessive is plural. We do not need an apostrophe-after-S structure to show that the word is plural.
Interpreting the number of the possessive deer’s in the second sentence is a matter of knowing the sentence’s context. This is one of those rare cases where the apostrophe structure alone cannot indicate number. But, it does not take an English major to see that “deer’s” in the sentence above is plural. Obviously, if we were talking about one deer, the notion of controlling the number of deer would not be an issue.
An Optional Rule for Apostrophe + S Endings
At times, it is acceptable (and preferred) to add the possessive -’s ending after an existing plural –s ending. This is in cases where the –’s ending adds an extra –ez syllable to the end of the word.
Consider this example, involving the shortened version of my name:
Chris’s piece on apostrophes made me more confident in my punctuation.
Think about it. If you pronounce the word “Chris’s,” you hear, “Chris-ez.” Adding the -’s ending after the existing –s ending shows this extra syllable. Some –s ending nouns, though, do not have an additional –ez sound when they are formed into possessives. Such –s ending words already end in an –ez sound before being made possessive.
A bit confusing? An example will serve best:
Socrates’ dialogues still act as an effective model of teaching today.
We do not pronounce the possessive of Socrates, Socrateez-ez. Nonsense. We simply pronounce it like the name itself, “Socrates.” To show this pronunciation, we just add the apostrophe after the –s ending.
The trick is to listen to the sound of the word. If there is an extra –ez syllable when the word becomes possessive, add both an apostrophe and an –s (ex. Chris’s). If there is no extra –ez syllable, just add an apostrophe after the existing –s ending (ex. Socrates’). And, if you must, pronounce the word aloud to help you make this decision.
As the title of this section states, the additional -’s ending is an optional technique. Simply adding the apostrophe at the end is acceptable for making any –s ending word possessive (ex. Chris’). Still, I like to go the extra mile, especially if I am writing for a particularly learned audience.
There are still a few more apostrophe rules left for us to examine. The next article explains ways of handling apostrophes when multiple possessive words appear together in a sentence. If you want to achieve an entirely new level of apostrophe adeptness (and I know you do), read on.
Here is the link:
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Where Not to Use Apostrophes
The two essential apostrophe rules are:
1. Use apostrophes to make words possessive.
2. Use apostrophes to form contractions.
Despite the simplicity of these two rules, people still overuse apostrophes. Because of this rampant tendency to overuse apostrophes, providing a list of when not to use apostrophes is just as important as a list of when writers should use them.
A misplaced apostrophe
Here are the places where you should not use apostrophes:
1. Do not use apostrophes to make nouns plural, or to make verbs singular. Simply add the –s ending.
Plural Noun Example: “I hope these writing lessons are useful.” (lesson—>lessons)
Singular Verb Example: “A good writer knows punctuation.” (know—>knows)
2. Although possessive nouns do take apostrophes, possessive pronouns with –s endings do not.
Examples of possessive pronouns: its, ours, hers, etc.
3. Do not use apostrophes to pluralize acronyms. The -s ending is set apart from the rest of the acronym by virtue of its being lowercase, while the acronym letters are uppercase.
Examples of pluralized acronyms: RPGs, IEDs, EMPs, DVDs
Exception: Using Apostrophes to Pluralize Nouns
There are very few cases where the apostrophe is used to pluralize a word. It is in cases where the word might be read as another word.
Here is an example: “Know your do’s and don’ts for apostrophes.”
The plural noun, “do’s” here has an apostrophe because it would otherwise look like dos—as in MS Dos or dos prompt for computers. (After all, while knowing your dos is good, it is not the same as knowing your do’s.)
There is still one more apostrophe error to explore, and it’s the biggest of them all: confusing its and it’s.
Do you have trouble differentiating between its and it’s? Read on, and fret not:
photo credit: engineroomblog
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
The Two Apostrophe Essentials
Most people I encounter perceive apostrophes as confusing—as the exclusive esotery understood only by the elite and erudite. Nothing could be further from the truth. Apostrophes, for the most part, follow two simple rules, and most apostrophe errors violate one of these two rules. If you simply know these two rules, you will know ninety-nine percent of all there is to know about apostrophes.
In the vast majority of cases, apostrophes are used for one of two purposes:
1. To make a noun possessive (example: Christopher—>Christopher’s book)
2. To form a contraction (example: can + not = can’t)
Note that when apostrophes appear in contractions, they take the place of missing letters. In the example above, “can’t,” the apostrophe takes the place of the letter O in “not.” As we will see later, these placeholder apostrophes appear in both contractions and other words.
We have explored the two main places people should use apostrophes. The next lesson in apostrophes focuses on those places where writers should not use apostrophes (but where they often do).
Interested? Here is the link:
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
All about Apostrophes
The first writing tool I want to discuss is the oft-overlooked apostrophe. I think of it as the flathead screwdriver of writing. Why?
A somewhat ironic example of apostrophe overuse.
A somewhat ironic example of apostrophe overuse.
Well, consider the situation of the flathead screwdriver. Its usefulness is undeniable. Of course, people use it for its named purpose: to tighten flathead screws and bolts. But, it’s also useful for tightening Phillips-head screws. The worker can use it to wedge apart two loosely connected objects, like pulling molding from a wall surface. If you think about it, or recall your own experiences with this super-handy tool, I’ll bet you can think of other good applications.
But the flathead screwdriver is often the victim of abuse. People use it to chisel away tile grout, which dulls or even chips away its head. They use it sometimes as a digging tool, if there is no better tool available. They use it to wedge apart two tightly connected objects, when a crowbar is the better tool. For these reasons, many an unfortunate flathead screwdriver ends up dulled, bent, broken—or worse.
The apostrophe, in both senses, is like the flathead screwdriver: (1) it has many productive uses, but (2) it is often misapplied and overused, such that its legitimate uses are forgotten or ignored. In this installment of Writer’s Toolbox, we will explore both the essentials and the finer points of this high-precision writing tool.
Listed below are links to my articles on apostrophes. I recommend taking them in the order listed, but if any particular article catches your interest, feel free to read it now.
Here are the links:
- The Two Apostrophe Essentials
- Where Not to Use Apostrophes
- The Most Common Apostrophe Error: Its or It’s?
- So What about Words that Already End in -s? What about Plural Possessives?
- Possessives and Compound Nouns
- Apostrophes: Odds & Ends
- Why are Apostrophes Important?
Further Reading: Apostrophes and Other Punctuation
I suggest first the book mentioned above: Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation, by Richard Lederer and John Shore. This book—which I consider the best punctuation guide on the market—will teach you all the do’s and don’ts of punctuation, even as it will have you laughing to the point of tears. Comma Sense is a handy reference that should sit on every writer’s desk, but it also makes for an excellent cover-to-cover read.
I also suggest Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss, and The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, by Karen Elizabeth Gordon.
Another great book for learning about punctuation—and other elements of the English language—is C. Edward Good’s A Grammar Book for You and I (Oops, Me!): All the Grammar You Need to Succeed in Life. Good’s grammar book delivers on the promise made in its subtitle, and, like Comma Sense, it is an entertaining cover-to-cover read.
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
