Oops--I lied!

Yes, I told a lie last post. There's one other apostrophe problem I'd like to address before we put the subject of this little punctuation mark to bed.

Many writers are confused about whether or not to place an apostrophe after a possessive name or noun that ends in "s."

For example, is it Charles's suit, or Charles' suit?

The buses' doors are broken. Or is it buses's?

Is the Jones's house sign written as The Jones's or The Jones'?

And if Charles's and Jones's are correct, then do we pronouns both "s" sounds, or not?

The answer to the above questions is frustrating: it depends.

It depends on whether you are writing for a North American or a European audience, and whether or not the name or word in question is modern, biblical or foreign.

Tastes change, and therefore so does proper usage in this matter. We should all adopt some degree of flexibility, and I again suggest that clarity is always the writer's main goal. Consistency comes next.

If you're a true stickler, though, according to Fowler's Modern English Usage, possessive names ending in "s" require an additional "s" after the apostrophe.

So, it's The Jones's, then. Pronounce both "s's."

But if a name is referring to someone from antiquity, only one "s" and an apostrophe will suffice: Herodotus' travels; Ulysses' home.

And if the name ends in an "iz" sound, (as in Ulysses, above) use only one "s" and an apostrophe.

Lastly, Jesus' name, in a possessive form, is always written with only one "s" followed by an apostrophe.

As for the buses, it just sounds silly to pronounce both "s's" in the possessive buses's.
Best to keep it simple, although here you run the danger of confusing a singular bus with a plural: One bus's door was still broken, but two buses' doors had been repaired.

Okay--enough said about the apostrophe. Next time: the period (or dot, as some people like to call it now).

Arghh! Even the best newspapers can't get it right!

I know I said I'm (almost) done with apostrophes, but this one caught my eye today.

From a caption under a photo in The Telegraph:

"The Louvre Abu Dhabi opened it's first permanent collection to the public April 21. It is the largest of France's overseas cultural project."

The odd thing is that when I typed the first sentence, autocorrect didn't change my correct its to the erroneous it's.  A writer must have made that slip.

Can you see another error in the caption?

(Sorry for the earlier mistake I made when I incorrectly named The Guardian instead of The Telegraph as the source of the above errors).

Enough with the apostrophes, already

Okay, there are only two more reasons we might want to use an apostrophe, although these are so similar it seems unnecessary to treat them as distinct.

 First, we need to use an apostrophe when we indicate the plurals of letters and numerals.

Sarah got three B's and two A's on her report card.
Obviously, she's been successful in learning her A,B,C's and her 1,2,3's.

We also need an apostrophe to indicate the plurals of words referred to as words. This is a little trickier.

Think about all the in's and out's we could manage to pull off.

The memo contained three her's which should be changed to their's. (How's this for confusing? Normally we would never write her's or their's, as most possessive pronouns don't require an apostrophe).

Or how about his one?

I'm tired of all the can't's in your excuse.

Best not to go there, I think.

And so now I'm done with apostrophes. Next post I'll run a quick review (good pedagogical practice, I'm told) and move on to something new. (No hints. I want to surprise everyone).

But if you think you haven't had enough of apostrophes, relax. I'll have to revisit them when I discuss pronouns.

Until then...

Apostrophes and the Irish: Use #6

I'm treating this sixth use of the apostrophe separately from the others only because I learned something while I was researching for this blog. I wanted to highlight it so I might be able to remember it.

We all know at least one O'Riley, or O'Neill, or O'Hara and we probably thought, if we thought about it all all, that the apostrophe in these names is a contraction, indicating the omission of the "f" in the word "of." 

Sean O'Riley would be Sean "of" Riley, for example, (meaning Sean is the son and grandson of the senior Riley's).

But, according to Lynn Truss, the "O" in Irish names is an English form of the old Irish word "au," which means "grandson."

So there you go. Who knew?

Apostrophes #5: Strange or non-standard English

In formal writing, such as business letters, academic papers and such, we probably won't use many non-standard  words. But for casual writing, and especially fiction, we can choose from a wealth of unconventional terms to add colour and richness to our expressions.

This is especially the case when we try to write language as it's spoken, such as in dialogue. Here we strive to capture the way speech sounds, rather than articulate the speaker's words correctly. And regional dialects and foreign accents might require the apostrophe to help us more accurately express a speaker's voice.

One classic example is in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, where Joseph's speech is still to this day almost unintelligible to me.

When asked where Heathcliff is, he answers, "T' maister's down i' 't fowld." (The master is down in the [sheep]fold).

Here, in trying to capture the character's broad Yorkshire accent, Bronte's has omitted the "he" of "the," (twice) and the "n" of "in." Simple enough, but it still makes for difficult reading.

Often a word is written as we might pronounce it, like wishin', and hopin', and singin' for example.
In each case here the apostrophe indicates that "g," the last letter of the word, is omitted.

Sometimes it's the first letter that's omitted, such as 'ello, or one of the other letters in a word, such as s'pose (suppose).

So you can see that the apostrophe can as versatile as we need it to be when we want to be creative with the English language.

The 4th and most abused/confused apostrophe rule

I say this is the most abused/confused apostrophe rule because of the it's/its problems discussed in one of my first posts. Remember? It's always means it is.

Very few people get this right all of the time. Even I have been known to slip up on occasion. One of my readers noticed this error in my romance novel, Just Desserts. Apparently two editors and the author missed it, and I'll get it fixed ASAP.

But problems don't stop with the it's/its issue. An apostrophe is required to indicate that one or more letters has been omitted from a word. We used to call these words contractions.

Using an apostrophe in a contraction can be quite simple. In words such as o'clock (which hardly anyone uses anymore), the apostrophe indicates the letter f and the word the have been omitted. Apparently, we used to say, "It's one of the clock." Now we just say, "It's one o'clock.")

But it's the common-as-dirt verb contractions that usually trip up writers. Words such as I'm, you're, he's, they're, we've, it's (already mentioned....) and many more.

People often don't, won't and can't remember where to place the apostrophe. They shouldn't be so confused. The apostrophe replaces the omitted letter or letters. When in doubt, avoid the contraction altogether and write out the full two words: I am, you are, he is, they are, it is, etc.

In the above example, omitting the apostrophe mightn't give readers a huge problem, unless they confuse the word cant (leaning) with can't (can not), or wont (inclination) with won't (will not).

It's always better to err on the side of clarity. Besides, in formal writing, we should avoid using contractions. Leave them to informal blogs, chatty emails and fiction.

Apostrophe uses #2 and #3

Okay, we've seen that when we want to indicate possession, the placement of the apostrophe varies. And that placement depends on whether the noun doing the possessing is singular or plural, and ends in "S" or not.

Tricky stuff, and doomed to be mis-corrected by your word processor's autocorrect. (Or word processors', if you have more than one).

So, you're warned. If you want to be absolutely sure you're not making a mistake with your possessive nouns, you have to slow down and really take a hard look at where that apostrophe is placed.

For example, the singular possessive is boy's; the plural possessive is boys'.

Now, the second use of the apostrophe is to indicate time or quantity. Very few people bother to use an apostrophe in this instance.

In a month's time, the house will be sold.
We need two weeks' notice before we can fill the order. (Notice where I placed the apostrophe in this example?)

She ate a dollar's worth of jelly beans.

And a third use for the little apostrophe is to show the omission of numbers in dates. This one should be easy to remember. When we adopt a casual tone in our writing we may say something like this: How could I forget the summer of  '69? Or was it '68?

Only five more apostrophe entries and we're done.

Apostrophes: Use #1

Probably the first time we used an apostrophe in grade school was to show the possessive of a singular noun. We learned to add an "apostrophe S" to a singular noun to show possession.

A seagull stole my son's lunch.

The kitchen's floor and the bedroom's walls needed a good scrubbing.

That's pretty straightforward, right? But instantly we learned that nothing stays simple.
When the possessor is plural, and does not end in "S," we still add an "apostrophe S," but if the possessor is plural and ends in "S," the apostrophe is placed after the "S."

The men's team will play first.

Our boys' team won the trophy.

Isn't this one simple rule enough to make most writers throw up their hands and give up trying to place the apostrophe in the right place?

Near my town there's a big sign on a lot that sells motor homes and other recreational vehicles. It says  Big Boy's Toys. Now, did the owner who commissioned the sign really intend to tell the world that he's selling toys for just one, particular big boy? Surely he carries enough stock for a number of big boys.