Nine-year-old Ammarah Mahmood is a girl after my own heart. Given a school project to find examples of apostrophe misuse, she spotted 15 glaring examples of apostrophes in the wrong place during a 15-minute walk round her local market in Keighley, West Yorkshire. Apostrophes are one of the most commonly misunderstood punctuation marks so here’s a quick recap of when and how to use them.
We’ve all smiled at signs such as “Tomatoe’s” and “Crisp’s”. The problem seems to lie in people’s inability to recognise that there are only two possible uses for apostrophes: one being to show ownership of something – a possessive apostrophe – and the other being to denote a letter (or letters) left out of a word – the contraction or abbreviation apostrophe.
For instance:
“Many believe a company’s carelessness over spelling and grammar could reflect a lack of attention to detail in other areas.”
In this example, a possessive apostrophe should be used.
“Poor grammar doesn’t help you create a professional image.”
Here, an abbreviation apostrophe is needed to represent a missing word – in this case ‘not’.
It’s true that things can get slightly more complicated with words and names that already end in an ‘s’ but for a singular word ending in ‘s’ we just add ‘s – as in “the boss’s complaint”. And for plurals ending in ‘s’ we add only an apostrophe after the ‘s’, as in this example:
“Our clients’ marketing communications inspire confidence.”
Although this sounds simple to us here at Words etc, apostrophes are frequently inserted in the wrong place or where they’re just not needed, leading to the many wince-making errors we see around us every day.
If you have a spelling, grammar or writing query you’d like answered, just get in touch and we’ll tackle it next time!
