By: Kathy Lang PhD
Wherever you look, especially on the Internet, you will find examples of
the misuse of apostrophes. The most common mistake is to
insert an apostrophe before the letter 's' in a plural word.
But apostrophes used to show contraction and possession are
often misplaced, even where they are needed. Should you
care? It depends on your audience. Some people will not
notice. Most will: they may not be clear about
what is wrong, but they will know that something is,
and mark you down as ignorant. And that is not a good way to
attract readers of your deathless prose.
But the most important reason for being careful with
apostrophes is that a large part of your audience -- at
least a third of internet users reading pages in English,
probably more -- are not native speakers of English. Very
few languages other than English use apostrophes at all, yet
our language would be truly stilted and formal if we did not
use them at all. I have deliberately avoided them so far in
this article, and it certainly sounds a bit wooden in places
to me! It is so easy to use apostrophes correctly, once you
know the basic, simple rules, and those simple changes
will make your pages much more friendly to all your readers.
Apostrophes in plural words
Mistakes of this kind are so common that you may not need to see
examples, but here are a couple I've seen recently:
"Antique's for sale" as an Adwords headline
"24-year-old kid astounds the guru's with his amazing
scheme"
The reason people make this mistake is that they get
confused between plural words and the use of the apostrophe
's' to show possession. You don't need an apostrophe just
because the word ends in "s" -- only if the "s" shows
ownership.
Apostrophes to show possession
I've never seen another language that uses the apostrophe in
this way, and it certainly strikes most non-native English
speakers as very strange. Most languages use another form,
which we would translate as "the book of the boy" where we
would say "the boy's book". Other languages use the form
"the boy his book", and that, of course, is where our
approach comes from: "boy his" has been contracted to
"boy's". It's actually pretty easy to tell whether you need
an apostrophe in this situation or not. Just ask yourself:
what is missing from the word with the apostrophe? So "the
tree's leaves were falling" is correct, because you couldn't
(nowadays) say "the tree its leaves", so you have to show
possession some other way. But in the phrase "the trees are
turning brown", the word "trees" does not need an
apostrophe, because there is nothing missing: the "s" in
"trees" shows that there is more than one tree, not that the
tree owns anything.
Apostrophes that show contraction
We should never, nowadays, say or write "the boy his book".
But there are plenty of modern examples of apostrophes
showing contraction:
"I've" for "I have"
"don't" for "do not"
"the party's over" for "the party is over"
for a dialect example, try "d'rectly" -- a contraction
of "directly" used in my part of the world to mean something
like manana, but not so fast...
A few other languages do use this form of apostrophe,
notably French: for example je t'aime, which would
otherwise be written je te aime, and the two vowels
together would sound very awkward. But the rules about when
to contract or elide two words are very strict, and well-
known -- there's nothing like the cheerful anarchy of
English!
Apostrophes used in possessive pronouns
I've left this one until last, because the difference
between "it's" and "its" is the really tough
nut. Even native English speakers find it difficult,
and the international audience finds it really hard.
Because of this, and also because very few languages have a
neuter pronoun (even a computer is masculine in French...),
I try to avoid "its" and "it's" altogether when there's a
chance my audience might include people for whom English is
not their mother tongue.
But sometimes you have little choice, and fortunately there
is another golden rule here. If you can replace the
apostrophe with a letter, and the sentence still makes
sense, as in "it's a fine day" which can become
"it is a fine day", then you need an apostrophe. If
"its" is the possessive pronoun, as in "the
tree has lost its leaves", then you must not use an
apostrophe. Simple, really...
For more about writing for international markets, read Kathy's book
Writing for the World. One distinguished
reviewer, Dr Mani, commented:
"If only everyone writing ebooks/reports could densely pack so much
value into a crisp, short report, while keeping it entertaining and
lively so it becomes an easy, fun read..."
