Proper Apostrophe Usage

Guide to Proper Apostrophe Usage

Here is some information about using apostrophes in the proper format when you’re writing.  This can help you with grammar issues if that is something that challenges you in your writing skills.  Take a look at our other valuable resources to learn more about English and grammar to understand the basics in reading and writing.

THE APOSTROPHE: A HANDBOOK

Consider the apostrophe:  –>   ‘

That’s it.  It’s an innocuous, insignificant-looking little mark on the page– a seeming linguistic afterthought.  But for a mark so basic to the English language, it’s shocking how often it’s misused.  In addition to a guide to how to properly utilize the apostrophe, we’ve included some egregious examples of apostrophe abuse, and a batch of links to grammar-based websites.  There are two primary ways to use the apostrophe, and a handful of less common ways.  We’ll start with the two basic uses, and include some examples.

First off, the apostrophe can stand in lieu of missing letters in a contraction.  For example, we can say can’t instead of can not, it’s instead of it is, or wasn’t instead of was not.  Sometimes it can exist in a contraction regardless of whether or not it replaces missing letters, such as won’t instead of will not or– even though it’s a bit archaic– shan’t instead of shall not.  And sometimes the apostrophe will replace missing numbers, like when we talk about the ’70s or having graduated college in ’08.

Secondly, the apostrophe can indicate possession.  If the possessor doesn’t end in S, then the apostrophe fits between the last letter of the possessor and the S.  For example, we would write Emily’s house, the cat’s food dish, or the house’s chimney.  If the possessor ends in S (usually when it’s plural), then the apostrophe goes after the S.  So we would write Carlos’ backpack, the Coopers’ mailbox, or William Gass’ latest novel.  At first, the word its seems possessive, but it isn’t a noun with a possessive quality tacked onto it.  Rather, it’s a freestanding adjective that indicates possession, much like her or our.

Things get more complicated, but only slightly.  The apostrophe can indicate possession, but the possessed noun need not be there.  For instance, I can say my jacket, not my brother’s.  See?  The possessed noun is implied, but you still need the apostrophe.  With compound nouns, the apostrophe comes after the whole compound noun.  For example, I could say your sister-in-law’s car.  Similarly, if you are referring to two possessors over a single possessed (even if that possessed is a plural), you would place the apostrophe after both possessors.  For example, Ellen and Michael’s cats are both sick indicates that Ellen and Michael have joint ownership of two cats.  However, if we were to say Ellen’s and Michael’s cats are both sick, that would imply that Ellen and Michael both have cats, and that both cats are sick.  There wouldn’t necessarily be any connection between Ellen and Michael.

If the possessed is a gerund, an apostrophe could still be used.  So we could say Erin’s sculpting gets better each year.  Remember that plurals are never indicated by apostrophes.  This makes intuitive sense to most people, except, mysteriously, when groups of capital letters or numbers are called into play.  So we could refer to a group of newly graduated PhDs or the rise of hip-hop in the 1980s, but we would not use an apostrophe.

It’s become fashionable, especially online, to utilize apostrophes as quotation marks, and refer to them as “smart quotes.”  We can’t figure out what’s smart about them.  It is acceptable to use single quotes to denote a quote within a quote.  So we could quote a book by saying “Nietzsche famously said ‘It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author– and not to learn it better’ in the aphorisms section of Beyond Good and Evil” but if that quote was freestanding, we would use the standard quotation marks.  In some fonts, single quotes show up as two separate symbols, one identical to an apostrophe, the other appearing as a backwards apostrophe, but other fonts just use the same minimalist vertical blip for both the apostrophe and the single quote.

Further Reading…