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An apostropheAn apostrophe ( ’ ) is a punctuation and sometimes diacritic mark in languages written in the Latin alphabet. In English, it marks omissions, forms the possessive, and, in special cases, assists in forming plurals.
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English language usage
- An apostrophe is used with an added s to indicate possession, as in Oliver's army, Elizabeth's crown. This derives from the Old English genitive case, indicating possession, which often ended in the letters "-es". The omitted "e" was indicated by the apostrophe. This is sometimes called the Saxon genitive.
- An apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters as in:
- abbreviations, as gov't for government, or '70s for 1970s.
- contractions, such as can't from cannot and it's from it is or it has.
- plurals, in a few unusual cases.
- An apostrophe is used by some writers to form a plural for abbreviations and symbols where adding just s rather than ’s would be ambiguous. While British English did formerly endorse the use of such apostrophes after numbers and dates, this usage has now largely been superseded.
- For the plural of single lower-case letters, such as mind your p's and q's. Some sources extend the use to the plural of single upper-case letters, others to the plural of single digits, and yet others to the plural of numerals, although in those latter cases there is no ambiguity being lifted.
- For the plural of abbreviations, it is widely (but not universally) regarded as incorrect, so CDs not CD's.
- For groups of years, it is not necessary where there is no ambiguity: 1960s not 1960's, 90s or '90s not '90's.
- Finally, a few sources 1 accept its use as an alternative spelling of the plurals of a very few short words (such as do, ex, yes, no; in each case, dos, exes, yesses and noes would be preferred).
Non-English names
- Irish surnames often contain apostrophes, for instance the name O'Reilly. This arose from a rendering of the Irish Ó.
- Some Scottish surnames use an apostrophe, such as M'Gregor. The apostrophe here is a contraction where the Scots prefix Mc or Mac would normally appear.
- French and Italian surnames sometimes contain apostrophes, e.g. D'Angelo. Other times, foreign names that would have used an accented character have an apostrophe substituted, e.g. DuPre'.
Geographic names
Place names usually take no apostrophe, except in a few special circumstances. The United States Geologic Survey, which has responsibility for formal naming of municipalities and geographic features, has deprecated the apostrophe since 1890. As of 2005, only five place names in the US are officially spelled with an apostrophe (one example being Martha's Vineyard). London has a St. James's Park, whereas Newcastle United play at St. James' Park. The special circumstances here may be these: the customary pronunciation of this place name is reflected in the addition of an extra -s. Since usage is firmly against a doubling of the final -s without an apostrophe, this place name has an apostrophe.
Things to note
- The apostrophe in it's marks a contraction of it is or it has. The possessive its has no apostrophe. Many find this confusing. It might help to remember that there is no apostrophe in any of his, hers, its, whose (see below), ours, yours, or theirs. Other pronouns do take a possessive apostrophe: one's, everybody's (along with everyone's, anybody's, and similar), somebody else's, etc.
- Who's means who is or who has. The possessive of who is whose. "The person whose responsibility it is is the member who's oldest."
- You're means you are. This is different from the possessive your. "Your nuts" implies the nuts belong to you. "You're nuts" would mean "You are nuts". Similarly, "You're going" means "You are going". "Your going" refers to the act of going, similar to "his going". "You're going to Mexico. Your going will be helpful to the company."
- Likewise, its role in pluralization of symbols has led to a modern tendency to use the apostrophe incorrectly to form plurals of words, that is plural's of word's, such as the movie title Dating Do's and Don'ts in which the first apostrophe is widely regarded as erroneous.
- When the noun is plural and already ends in s, no extra s is added in the possessive, so pens' lids (where there is more than one pen) rather than pens's lids. If the plural noun doesn't end in s, then add s as usual: children's hats.
- If a name already ends with an s, the extra s is sometimes dropped: Jesus' parables. This is more common in U.S. usage and with classical names (Eros' statue, Herodotus' book). Additionally, many contemporary names that end with -es (a -z sound) will see the extra s dropped by some writers: Charles' car, though most style guides advocate Charles's car.
This last principle may extend to words ending in -x, -z, -ss, or even -ce, though this is far from being universal. Note that some people would say Asterix' sons, others would say Asterix's sons. The formation of possessives in speech is one thing, and how possessives are represented in writing is another; but spoken practice sometimes helps in determining what it is proper to write.
Tip
To check if you've got it right, swap the sentence around so that the part before the apostrophe becomes the last word, and insert of the in between the two. If the meaning hasn't changed, you've got it right.
- Pens’ lids becomes lids of the pens.
- Boy's hats becomes hats of the boy.
- Boys' hats becomes hats of the boys.
- Two weeks' notice becomes notice of two weeks.
- One week's notice becomes notice of one week.
- Children's hats becomes hats of the children.
- But childrens' hats would become hats of the childrens, which is incorrect, so therefore childrens' hats must also be incorrect.
Greengrocers' apostrophe
Apostrophes used incorrectly to form plurals are known as greengrocers' apostrophes (also: greengrocer's apostrophes, grocers' apostrophes or grocer's apostrophes, sometimes humorously greengrocers apostrophe's). The term was coined in the United Kingdom where such mistakes are common in the signs and advertisements of greengrocers, e.g. “Apple's and orange's for sale, 50% off”. The practice comes from a widespread ignorance of the use of the apostrophe and the identical sound of the plural and possessive forms of most nouns.
Derivation
The use of the apostrophe to note possession in the English language derived from the genitive case, but is now considered a clitic.
Other languages
- In many European languages, the apostrophe is used to indicate omitted characters, often in a contraction. For example, in the Portuguese language or Spanish language it is used when de (of) can elide with the following word, like galinha d'angola (literally, Angola's chicken) or some poetical constructions, like minh'alma, contraction of "minha alma" (my soul). In Spanish language it is used when a consonant or vowel is not pronounced, e.g. Pa' (para, for), pa'l (para el, for the), to' (todo, all), to'l (todo el, all the), comi'o (comido, ate), vamo' (vamos, we go), etc.
- In German, this is very similar: an apostrophe is only used to indicate omitted letters. It must not be used for plurals or possessive forms, both usages which are widespread, but deemed wrong. (See article Apostrophitis in the German Wikipedia.)
- In the Dutch language, it is also used to indicate omitted characters. In addition however, it is used for plurals where the singulars end with certain vowels, e.g. foto's, taxi's, and for the genitive of proper names ending with these vowels, e.g. Anna's, Otto's.
- In the Slovak and Czech languages, common typographic rendering (at least for some typefaces) of caron over lowercase t, d, l, and uppercase L consonants (ď, ť, ľ, Ľ) looks a lot like an apostrophe, but it is very incorrect to use apostrophe instead (compare previous example with incorrect d', t', l', L'). In Slovak, there is also l with acute accent (ĺ, Ĺ). In Slovak, it is used to indicate elision in certain words ("tys'" as an abbreviated form of "ty si"), however, these elisions are restricted to poetry.
- In the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages, the apostrophe is used between a consonant and the following “soft” (iotified) vowel (е, ё, є, ю, я) to indicate that no palatalization of the preceding consonant takes place, and the vowel is pronounced in the same way as at the beginning of the word. The same function is served by the hard sign in some other Cyrillic alphabets.
- In some transliterations from the Cyrillic alphabet (of Belarusian, Russian, or Ukrainian language), the apostrophe is used to replace the soft sign (ь, indicating palatalization of the preceding consonant), e.g., Русь is transliterated Rus’ according to the BGN/PCGN system. Confusingly, some of these transliteration schemes use a double apostrophe ( ” ) to represent the apostrophe in Cyrillic text, e.g. Ukrainian слов’янське (“Slavic”) is transliterated as slov”yans’ke.
- Some Karelian orthographies use an apostrophe to indicate palatalization, e.g. n'evvuo "to give advice", d'uuri "just (like)", el'vüttiä "to revive".
- In some languages it represents the glottal stop (as in Hawai'i, see ‘okina) or similar sounds in the Turkic language and in romanizations of Arabic languages. Sometimes this function is performed by the opening single quotation mark.
- In Guaraní it performs the same function but it's considered a different letter on its own, called puso (/pu'so/), as in the words ñe'ẽ, ka'a, a' ỹ.
- In Finnish, one of the consonant gradation patterns is the change of a 'k' into a hiatus, e.g. keko → keon "a pile → pile's". This hiatus has to be indicated in spelling with an apostrophe, if a long vowel or a diphthong would be immediately followed by the final vowel, e.g. ruoko → ruo'on, vaaka → vaa'an. (This is in contrast to compound words, where the same problem is solved with a hyphen, e.g. maa-ala "land area".) The same meaning for an apostrophe, a hiatus, is used in poetry to indicate contractions, e.g. miss' on for missä on "where is".
- In the Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (pinyin) system of romanization for Standard Mandarin, the apostrophe is used to separate syllables in a word where ambiguity could arise.
- In Jèrriais, one of the uses of the apostrophe is to mark gemination. For example, t't represents a long /t/, s's a long /s/, n'n a long /n/, th'th a long /ð/, and ch'ch a long /ʃ/.
Alternative uses
- The vertical typewriter apostrophe (') is often used to approximate the prime (used a symbol to indicate measurement in feet or arcminutes); the right single quotation mark apostrophe is less appropriate in this context.
- In science fiction, the apostrophe is often used to decorate alien names, e.g. Z'ha'dum in Babylon 5.
- The Brazilian native language Tupi and the fictional language of Klingon use an apostrophe to denote a glottal stop, while the constructed Lojban language uses an apostrophe to denote an voiceless glottal fricative.
Computers and Unicode
There are three types of apostrophe character in Unicode:
- ( ' ) Vertical typewriter apostrophe (Unicode name "apostrophe" or "apostrophe-quote"), Unicode and ASCII character 39, or hexadecimal U+0027.
- ( ’ ) Punctuation apostrophe ("right single quotation mark" or "single comma quotation mark"), U+2019.
- ( ʼ ) Letter apostrophe ("modifier letter apostrophe"), U+02BC.
In most cases, the preferred apostrophe character is the punctuation apostrophe (distinguished as typographic, or curly apostrophe). But historically, only the vertical typewriter apostrophe has been present on computer keyboards and in 7-bit ASCII character encoding. The typographic apostrophe is in different positions of the many 8-bit encodings.
So in practice, the typewriter apostrophe is much more commonly used by writers and ors. For the same historic reasons, the typewriter apostrophe is a highly overloaded character position. In ASCII, it represents a right single quotation mark, left single quotation mark, apostrophe punctuation, vertical line, or prime (punctuation marks) or an apostrophe modifier or acute accent (modifier letters).
In some cases an apostrophe is not considered punctuation which separates letters, but as a letter in its own right; a letter apostrophe. Examples are in some national languages where the apostrophe is considered a letter (e.g, the Cyrillic Azerbaijani alphabet), or in some transliterations (e.g., transliterated Arabic glottal stop, hamza, or transliterated Cyrillic soft sign). As the letter apostrophe is seldom used in practice, the Unicode standard cautions that one should never assume text is coded thus.
The Nenets language has single and double letter apostrophes:
- ( ˮ ) Double letter apostrophe (Unicode name "modifier letter double apostrophe"), U+02EE.
Entering apostrophes
During text entry on computers, some programs automatically convert to the appropriate apostrophe or quotation mark characters; the so-called "smart quotes" feature. Apostrophes and quotation marks that are not automatically altered by computer programs are known as "dumb quotes". Such conversion can be provided by word processing software as you type, or on web servers after submitting text in a form field, e.g., on weblogs or free encyclopedias. Many such software programs incorrectly enter an opening quotation mark for a leading apostrophe (e.g., in abbreviations of years: ‘04 rather than ’04 for 2004), or an apostrophe for a prime (e.g., latitude 49° 53′ 08″).
A useful quick solution to get such cases right in Microsoft Word is to type two apostrophes, and then simply delete the first.
On Microsoft Windows, Unicode special characters can be entered explicitly by holding the ALT key and typing the four-digit decimal code position of the character. An apostrophe is entered by holding alt while typing 8217. (Typing a three-digit code will enter a character value in the current code page, which may not correspond to its Unicode value.)
On the Apple Macintosh, special characters are typed while holding down the option key, or option and shift keys together. In Macintosh English-language keyboard layouts, an apostrophe is typed with the shortcut option-shift-
In publishing, typewriter apostrophes are always converted to typographic apostrophes. To a graphic designer's or typographer's eye, the appearance of the former in print is a glaring sign of unprofessionalism. Because of the egalitarian nature of electronic publishing, and the low resolution of computer monitors in comparison to print, typewriter apostrophes have been considered much more tolerable on the web. However, due to the wide adoption of the Unicode text encoding standard, near-universal web browser support, higher-resolution displays, and advanced anti-aliasing of text in modern operating systems, the use of typographic apostrophes is becoming common on web sites by discerning designers. Unfortunately, such use is not always done in accordance with the standards for character sets and encodings, as mentioned more fully below.
Eight-bit encodings
Older 8-bit character encodings, such as ISO-8859-1, Windows CP1252, or MacRoman, universally support the typewriter apostrophe in the same position, 39, inherited from ASCII (as does Unicode). But most of them place the typographic apostrophe in different positions. ISO-8859-1, the most common encoding used for web pages, omits the typographic apostrophe altogether.
Microsoft Windows CP1252 (sometimes incorrectly called ANSI or ISO-Latin) is a duplicate of ISO-8859-1, with 27 additional characters in the place of control characters (in the range from 128 to 159). Microsoft software usually treats ISO-8859-1 as if it were CP1252. The wide adoption of Microsoft's web browser and web server has forced many other software makers to adopt this as a de facto convention—in some cases contravening established standards unnecessarily (e.g., some applications use CP1252 character values in HTML numeric references, where Unicode values are required, and would be sufficient for interoperation with MS software). Consequently, the typographic apostrophe and several other characters are handled inconsistently by web browsers and other software, and can cause interoperation problems.
References
- Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, 2003. Gotham Books, Toronto (North American ion). ISBN 1-592-40087-6
External links
- Apostrophe Abuser's Anonymou's (Humorous page decrying the abuse of apostrophes)
- The Complete Retard's Guide to the English Language: The Apostrophe Catastrophe
- Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots (GIF image, from Bob the Angry Flower)
- Bob's Quick Guide to Destroying the Apostrophe, You Idiots (GIF image, from Bob the Angry Flower)
- Plural's (GIF image, from Bob the Angry Flower)
- alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe newsgroup
- The Apostrophe Protection Society
- ASCII and Unicode quotation marks
