It's been called the greengrocer's apostrophe, but it's a lot more widespread than you might expect.
Shop signs, advertising hoardings, car graphics and Yellow Pages entries all contain the dreaded using-the-apostrophe-to-denote-plurals: Potato's 50p lb CD's on Sale Rogers Removal's A common misconception is that if a noun ends with a vowel, an apostrophe should be employed to denote its plural.
Thus we get idea's, live in different area's and experience phenomena's.
To a grammar pedant, sights like those above are like dragging your fingernails down a blackboard.
We have an almost physical reaction against such mistakes.
So is there an easy way to use apostrophes? Well, yes and no.
There are rules for their use, and exceptions to the rules too.
For instance, don't use the apostrophe on any plurals.
Except when you want to describe life, for instance, in the 1950's.
And it's always used to denote possession or belonging, like the child's shoes.
But not it's shoes, that would mean 'it is shoes', rather surreal and quite wrong.
Apostrophes are used as well to point out to the reader where there are some letters that've been removed.
'That've' means 'that have', truncated and shortened.
Cannot becomes can't, will not becomes won't and cat of nine tails becomes cat o' nine tails.
Confused yet? The apostrophe is a minefield for the unwary, and it's no good guessing: the grammar police (this author counts himself amongst them) will always seek out mistakes and punish them with contempt and public ridicule.
Not really, of course.
So, here is the possessive's use of the apostrophe.
Put the apostrophe after the single thing that something belongs to.
So, if the windows belong to (or rather, are attached to the front of) the shop, the rule would be 1.
shop, 2.
apostrophe, 3.
's'.
Thusly 'the shop's windows'.
If something belongs to a number of things, just use an apostrophe alone: 'the runners' shoes' speaks of many shoes belonging to many runners.
Now, the untidy exceptions.
If the plural of a word doesn't end in an 's' (like child/children, woman/women), treat it like a singular: 'the children's shoes, the women's clothes' and so forth.
And your final exception is the pronoun 'it'.
Anything belonging to it is denoted as 'its', as in 'its face was all red' and 'give it its due'.
There's no use of an apostrophe to denote the possessive for the pronoun it.
Confusing? It certainly is, but rules are rules.
It pays to keep them: we all make mistakes (should that be mistake's?) but correct use of the apostrophe is essential to make an author's thoughts and intentions clear.
Shop signs, advertising hoardings, car graphics and Yellow Pages entries all contain the dreaded using-the-apostrophe-to-denote-plurals: Potato's 50p lb CD's on Sale Rogers Removal's A common misconception is that if a noun ends with a vowel, an apostrophe should be employed to denote its plural.
Thus we get idea's, live in different area's and experience phenomena's.
To a grammar pedant, sights like those above are like dragging your fingernails down a blackboard.
We have an almost physical reaction against such mistakes.
So is there an easy way to use apostrophes? Well, yes and no.
There are rules for their use, and exceptions to the rules too.
For instance, don't use the apostrophe on any plurals.
Except when you want to describe life, for instance, in the 1950's.
And it's always used to denote possession or belonging, like the child's shoes.
But not it's shoes, that would mean 'it is shoes', rather surreal and quite wrong.
Apostrophes are used as well to point out to the reader where there are some letters that've been removed.
'That've' means 'that have', truncated and shortened.
Cannot becomes can't, will not becomes won't and cat of nine tails becomes cat o' nine tails.
Confused yet? The apostrophe is a minefield for the unwary, and it's no good guessing: the grammar police (this author counts himself amongst them) will always seek out mistakes and punish them with contempt and public ridicule.
Not really, of course.
So, here is the possessive's use of the apostrophe.
Put the apostrophe after the single thing that something belongs to.
So, if the windows belong to (or rather, are attached to the front of) the shop, the rule would be 1.
shop, 2.
apostrophe, 3.
's'.
Thusly 'the shop's windows'.
If something belongs to a number of things, just use an apostrophe alone: 'the runners' shoes' speaks of many shoes belonging to many runners.
Now, the untidy exceptions.
If the plural of a word doesn't end in an 's' (like child/children, woman/women), treat it like a singular: 'the children's shoes, the women's clothes' and so forth.
And your final exception is the pronoun 'it'.
Anything belonging to it is denoted as 'its', as in 'its face was all red' and 'give it its due'.
There's no use of an apostrophe to denote the possessive for the pronoun it.
Confusing? It certainly is, but rules are rules.
It pays to keep them: we all make mistakes (should that be mistake's?) but correct use of the apostrophe is essential to make an author's thoughts and intentions clear.