Common
Errors of Written Expression and Ways
of Avoiding Them*
Jennifer
Clarke
 
7.
The dreaded apostrophe
 What's
it for?
The
apostrophe has two main
uses:
(i)
to indicate where letters
have been omitted in the
contraction of a word,
e.g.
`they're' for `they are'
`you're'
for `you are'
`can't' for `cannot'
(ii)
to indicate that the noun (naming
word) to which the apostrophe is attached
possesses the thing which follows:
e.g.
Fred's dog.
Can
I leave it out?
NO! As noted
above, however, pronouns become
possessive without an apostrophe.
`He' becomes `his', `she' becomes
`her', `they' becomes `their' and
`it' becomes `its'.
Where
do I put it? Singulars and plurals
The normal rule
about possessive apostrophes is simple.
Where the noun is singular (`Fred'),
the apostrophe goes before
the `s'. When the noun is plural
(the girls), the apostrophe goes after
the `s'.
If
the playground belongs to or is used
by only one girl, you write
`the girl's playground'. But
if the playground belongs to or is
used by many girls, you write
`the girls' playground'.
e.g.
Your room looks like a
dog's breakfast.
The
lost dogs' home.
The footballer's groin
injury.
The footballers' cheer
squad.
The football team's
cheer squad.
The football teams'
cheer squads.
Where
you use more than one possessive noun
in a row, you may drop all but the
last apostrophe:
e.g.
The parents and teachers'
association.
Builders
Labourers' Federation.
What
about plural nouns which do not end
in `s'?
In words which
become plural without adding
`s', you put the apostrophe before
adding an `s':
e.g.
`Women's toilets.'
If
you wrote `woman's toilets', as many
students do, you would be suggesting
that the toilets were used by only
one woman.
e.g.
`Constitutional cases are among
the media's obsessions.'
What
about names which end in `s'?
You have a choice
here. You may simply add an apostrophe
after the `s', or add an apostrophe
and another `s'. Either of:
is
correct, but `Peter Hank's textbook'
is not correct, as the author's
name is Hanks
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