h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Correct Use Of The Apostrophe In English - A783227
Author: Uncle 'Uncle Heavy' Heavy - U129295

erm...ok...this is my article. it is about the correct use fo the apostrophe in english as the title would suggest. i know there is an article on punctuation, but this is more thorough. cos misuse annoys me intensely. i couldnt help but let a little bit of facetiousness creep into my writing, but i can eradicate that if it needs to go

Hi,

An intersting entry, though I think there's a little more that could be said.

'As with so much of English, it is often quite illogical in its function'

I think this is a little misleading - punctuation has evolved over the years, so what might appear as illogical often does have a very logical reason even if that reason has been lost along the way. For example:

'Of course there are exceptions, notably am not becoming ain't in a stupendous piece of illogicality'

'Am not' is a good example of how language slides - just a couple of centuries ago 'am't' was the common contraction, which became 'an't' and then 'ain't'. That 'ain't' is now so different from 'am not' might therefore make it look illogical, but there is a long, drawn out logic to it.

'The apostrophe is used to denote words that have been slurred to aid punctuation.'

More accurately, apostrophes tend to be used to denote that something is missing. The example I gave in another discussion recently was a word that describes a part of an old ship: Fo'c'sle - the forecastle. In the case of possession, it could be argued that the thing that is missing is the preposition, so 'Jack's ball' would really mean 'Jack - his ball' (although this was just a technique that our English teacher used to get us to understand the very point you're making ). The section on 'Impersonal possesion' should probably include 'his' and 'her' under 'pronoun possesion'.

'There seems to be some primordial urge in writers of shop signs to use it to denote plurals. This is manifestly wrong.'

Absolutely! In fact, this term is officially known as 'the grocer's apostrophe' for that very reason.

Would you also be able to put in a note on use of dates? I know we have that in the writer's guidelines, but it might help to mention here that '70s is right, but 70's is wrong?

Very good topic, I think, and very well written. Well done.


Jimster

Hya,

Great idea! My mum calls it 'Grocer's English' which is a slight variation on Jimster's version. It drives me beserk as well!

Not sure if you're allowed to put web links here...but if you are...and if you want to flesh the article out, the following might help:

http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Users/Martin/APOST/Apostrop.htm
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_apost.html
http://www.mantex.co.uk/samples/apo.htm

Nice entry Unc

One typo - becuase

Something you might want to add in the section about possession is the rule concerning names which end in 's' - should it be 'Tom Waits's album Small Change' or 'Tom Waits' album Small Change'?

'Tom Waits's album Small Change' - because there's only one Tom Waits. If it was The album of a family group called The Waits, where there's several Waits, then it would be The Waits' album Small Change.

actually i think it can be either...im not sure if there is a ruling.

i shall change my article rapidly, but i maintain that english grammar is now illogical becuase it has evolved so organically, that although eahc step was logic, they ahve become convoluted...this isnt a discussion on linguistics tho, so ill shut up

ok did that. if it doesnt get edited, the puppy gets it.

Unc, you wouldn't... would you?

yes. i would. and this spoon isnt very sharp.

Another typo as well as 'becuase ' pointed out earlier:

'otpions' > options.

I was taught at school that 'its' didn't have an apostrophe to distinguish it from 'it's', meaning 'it is'.

I was also taught that where the word ended in an 's' you didn't need a second 's' as in 'under fives' activities', although there *are* local variations on this, eg 'Banks's Beer'! Yum!

there are two 'possesion' which are lacking their second 's's

How about elaborating on the difference between (for clarity, I'm switching to doubles now) "it's" and "its". IMHO that's where most of the mistakes are made.

Five o'clock is another example for omission and more popular than fo'c'sle.

Well, Uncle, I've got a long list of points here, so you may prefer to give this a miss and just hurry along to the next posting. (But do come back to it at some stage!)

>The apostrophe is a much misused part of grammar
- Well, to be quite correct about it - and since the whole entry deals with minutiae, we ought to be - the apostrophe is not part of grammar at all - it's to do with punctuation.

>but there is a proscribed way of using it, which is quite byzantine even when the rules are set out.
- The proscribed way of using it isn't Byzantine. The prescribed way might be so described, but you still need a capital B.

>sometimes confused even by master grammarians.
- I doubt this. I am no master grammarian, but I don't find the apostrophe confusing. It's nowhere near as difficult as people make out. I think its misuse is usually due more to ignorance (the legacy of poor teaching at school) or inattention, than to its complexity or any great lack of intelligence.

>Simply put, the apostrophe is used to mark contractions
- There is a further use of the apostrophe which you haven't mentioned. This is its use in certain foreign words (eg Qur'an), generally to indicate a syllabic break or perhaps a glottal stop.

>The apostrophe is used to denote words that have been slurred to aid
punctuation.
- This sentence needs to altered, for at least two reasons:
a) It looks as though you are talking about 'words that have been slurred to aid punctuation'
b) The apostrophe is used as punctuation, not to aid it.

>When a letter is removed to make the .
- Something went adrift here.

>The vast majority of pitfalls in using them is when trying to say
- You can improve substantially on this wording. Perhaps use 'occur' instead of 'is'? But you make it sound as though there are lots of pitfalls, yet you mention only a couple. There are not many pitfalls. Don't exaggerate the problem.

>Singular possesion: This is straight forward
- No space between 'straight' and 'forward', I think.

>and can be applied to all nouns, both proper and improper.
- Improper nouns? I'm shocked. Shocked!

>It is either Jesus' teaching or Jesus's teaching. Elegance would seem to preclude the latter.
- In my view they are equally elegant. It's a matter of personal preference or house style, not elegance.

>Thus the ball belonging to the men is the mens' ball. The apostrophe is placed at the end of the word.
- No! Correct is: the men's ball. Only if "mens" was a word in this context, which it isn't, would "the mens' ball" be correct. Similarly, correct punctuation would be: the women's ball, the children's ball. But, of course, "the girls' ball", if more than one girl.

>Impersonal possesion: For reasons unknown to anyone, the ball belonging to it is signified as its ball - there is no apostrophe used. This rule is frequently overlooked. Don't be a statistic.
- This is the biggest problem for many people - the distinction between "its" and "it's". You really have to deal with this. Don't ignore it.

>There are many factors to be taken into consideration when making a quotation.
- Well, you haven't mentioned all these many factors. Here again, it's not that difficult, and there's little to be gained by trying to make it appear more complicated than it is.

>Grammar varies in this case between the US and Great Britain
- It's the punctuation, not the grammar, that varies in this way.

>In English: In English English
- Better to call it British English or UK English.

Mention the use of double and single quotation marks for a quotation within a quotation, as in, for example, 'He said, "You are crazy!"'

>The plural of CD is CDs This applies to all other acronyms like HGVs
- 'CD' and 'HGV' are not acronyms, but abbreviations. Acronyms are words such as NATO and NASA.

>Capische?
- Capisce. The word is Italian.

Since you have provided a quotation from Shakespeare, you might like to know that the word 'its' does not occur in any of Shakespeare's plays published during his lifetime. Neither does it occur in the Authorized Version of the Bible.

"It's" in the sense of 'belonging to it' was regularly used by writers right up until the early 19th Century. So although it is now considered illiterate, that was not always the case.

Bels

A586640 Declining English
you might want to link

christ that was an exhaustive list. at least some of the points i dont agree with at all, bels, but some of them are fair enough...ill look into it

cheers

you have to remember that some of the stuff like proper and improper nouns is facetiousness on ym part, not crap style

but, on the other hand, having re read it, that was the most atrociously written piece of work ive done in ages...hmmm...malapropisms all over the shop. must do better

Hmmm, I'm sure I was taught "s'" for plurals and "s's" for singlars.

i asked my mum who is an english teacher, a proof reader and all round grammar/punctuation beard. she said it didnt matter

Hmmm, I find that hard to believe- very little punctuation is optional. I suspect it's more a case of everyone does it wrong and very few people can remember how to do it right, so missuse becomes acceptable- kind of like a split infinitive.

split infinitives arent actually wrong. its become convention that they are because of one 18th century grammarian who made up a whole load of rules that he thought were neat.