The famous apostrophe - there are some very simple guidelines; please follow them to make yourself look less like a knobhead:
In English, plurals do not require apostrophes. Nor do verbs in the third person singular (he/she/it).
Apostrophes are used in two instances:
1. Possessives in singular and plural (Jean's book, for our members' convenience)
2. Shortening of auxiliary verbs (like he's and we're, it'll or we've, etc...)
The use of the apostrophe is very important in writing, for the reasons below:
This sign implies there is only room for one guest. When we want to say "of the only guest", we write guest's, but when we mean "of all the guests", we write guests'. Furthermore, why is every word here capitalised? We're not German!
Wrong again. Some plural words do not end in "s", like men, women, children. In this case, it is already evident there is more than one. We don't need to put the apostrophe afterwards like ordinary plurals, so we can write men's, women's, children's. What is the singular of men's, women's, children's? Answer at the bottom.
Above, a supermarket forgets it's is short for it is, and below the other way round:
It's very simple:
his + its = of him + of it
he's + it's = he is + it is.
Funny people know the rule when they use the feminine she's and her...
This is why the apostrophe is important in writing:
The symbol of everything wrong with the British attitude to their own language, the greengrocer:
Finally, this abomination:
Let us end with this simple lesson on spelling and pronunciation:
The sign above is wrong. Firstly, the word "bench" ends in a sound like "garage", "church", "wish", "stage", so we need to pronounce an extra sound "ɪ" before the plural, meaning these words might need an extra letter: "churches", "wishes", and therefore "benches". The same is true of he/she/it plus verbs of this kind: I fish ==> he fishes; I reach ==> he reaches.
And here, I rest my case:
...I guess this guy hates almost everyone - he didn't listen to his English teacher either...
The answer to the question what is the singular of men's, women's, children's? Man's, woman's and child's of course, but you knew that... right?
2 comments:
“There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.”
― Stephen Fry
I too hate Lynne Truss's one-policy argument. But I too like playing around with our beloved language. However, ignorance of the little symbol that we call an apostrophe is an abomination. You are, sir, the linguistic equivalent of the Harlot of Babylon! I could also pull a quote off the net to counter this one above by the splendid Mr Stephen Fry, who, I note, used his apostrophes correctly, but I won't - I prefer to write my own. So there!
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