The apostrophe, it seems, is the unluckiest grammatical mark in the English language. And that’s because more often than not, it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Poor use of punctuation can trip up your reader and undo all your hard writing work. So if you agonise over how to apostrophise, here’s some top tips to help you put the apostrophe in its rightful place.
Don’t apostrophise to pluralise
Don’t use an apostrophe to pluralise. It can be particularly tempting to slip an apostrophe in when writing the plural of an abbreviation, but there’s no need. If there’s more than one TV or DVD, you should write TVs and DVDs. The same goes for numbers – 100s, 1000s… and so forth.
It is it’s for it is – isn’t it?
This is the source of much confusion. Firstly:
- It’s is a contraction of it is.
- Its indicates that something belongs to it.
An easy way to identify which one to use is to remember that we always write his – not hi’s. When in doubt, replace the it in question with the word his and see if it still makes grammatical sense.
For example:
“The dog ran across the park. [Its/His] tail was white but [its/his] paws were dirty.”
Here, both make sense – so you would use its. This cannot be said for the following example, however:
“It’s a great day to walk the dog.”
Droppin’ letters
As we’ve already seen with it’s, apostrophes are used when a word is shortened, or two words are contracted to form one:
- Do not – don’t
- Cannot – can’t
- You are – you’re
Getting possessive
In every case other than its, apostrophes indicate possession.
If the book belongs to the teacher, it’s the teacher’s book.
If a group of teachers all have their own books, they are the teachers’ books. The same goes for other plural possessives – the ladies’ room, for example.
