Apostrophe


The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
  • The marking of the omission of one or more letters, e.g., the contraction of "do not" to "don't"
  • The marking of possessive case of nouns
It is also used in a few exceptional cases for the [|marking of plurals], e.g., "p's and q's" or Oakland A's.
The same mark is used as a single quotation mark. It is also substituted informally for other marks for example instead of the prime symbol to indicate the units of foot or minutes of arc.
The word apostrophe comes from the Greek ἡ ἀπόστροφος , through Latin and French.

Usage in English

Historical development

The apostrophe was first used by Pietro Bembo in his edition of De Aetna. It was introduced into English in the 16th century in imitation of French practice.

French practice

Introduced by Geoffroy Tory, the apostrophe was used in place of a vowel letter to indicate elision. It was also frequently used in place of a final when it was elided before a vowel, as in un' heure. Modern French orthography has restored the spelling une heure.

Early English practice

From the 16th century, following French practice, the apostrophe was used when a vowel letter was omitted either because of incidental elision or because the letter no longer represented a sound. English spelling retained many inflections that were not pronounced as syllables, notably verb endings and the noun ending "-es", which marked either plurals or possessives, also known as genitives. An apostrophe followed by was often used to mark a plural; specifically, the Oxford Companion to the English Language notes that:

Standardisation

The use of elision has continued to the present day, but significant changes have been made to the possessive and plural uses. By the 18th century, an apostrophe with the addition of an was regularly used for all possessive singular forms, even when the letter was not omitted. This was regarded as representing not the elision of the in the "-e" or "-es" ending of the word being pluralized, but the elision of the from the Old English genitive singular inflection "-es".
The plural genitive did not use the "-es" inflection, and since many plural forms already consisted of the "-s" or "-es" ending, using the apostrophe in place of the elisioned could lead to singular and plural possessives of a given word having the exact same spelling. The solution was to use an apostrophe after the plural . However, this was not universally accepted until the mid-19th century. Plurals not ending in -s keep the -'s marker, such as "children's toys, the men's toilet", since there was no risk of ambiguity.

Possessive apostrophe

The apostrophe is used in English to indicate what is, for historical reasons, misleadingly called the possessive case in the English language. This case was called the genitive until the 18th century and, like the genitive case in other languages, expresses relationships other than possession. For example, in the expressions "the school's headmaster", "the men's department", and "tomorrow's weather", the school does not own/possess the headmaster, men do not own/possess the department, and tomorrow does not/will not own the weather. In the words of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage:
That dictionary also cites a study that found that only 40% of the possessive forms were used to indicate actual possession.
The modern spelling convention distinguishes possessive singular forms from simple plural forms, and both of those from possessive plural forms. For example, the word "glass's" is the singular possessive form of the noun "glass". The plural form of "glass" is "glasses" and the plural possessive form is, therefore, "glasses. One would therefore say "I drank the glass's contents" to indicate drinking from one glass, but "I drank the glasses' contents" after also drinking from another glass.
For singular forms, the modern possessive or genitive inflection is a survival from certain genitive inflections in Old English, for which the apostrophe originally marked the loss of the old . Its use for indicating plural "possessive" forms was not standard before the middle of the 19th century.

General principles for the possessive apostrophe

Summary of rules for most situations
  • Possessive personal pronouns, serving as either noun-equivalents or adjective-equivalents, do not use an apostrophe, even when they end in. The complete list of those ending in the letter or the corresponding sound or but not taking an apostrophe is "ours", "yours", "his", "hers", "its", "theirs", and "whose".
  • Other pronouns, singular nouns not ending in, and plural nouns not ending in all take s" in the possessive: e.g., "someone's", "a cat's toys", "women's".
  • Plural nouns already ending in take only an apostrophe after the pre-existing to form the possessive: e.g., "three cats' toys".
    Basic rule (singular nouns)
For most singular nouns, the ending s" is added; e.g., "the cat's whiskers".
  • If a singular noun ends with an -sound, practice varies as to whether to add s" or the apostrophe alone. In many cases, both spoken and written forms differ between writers.
  • Acronyms and initialisms used as nouns follow the same rules as singular nouns: e.g., "the TV's picture quality".
    Basic rule (plural nouns)
When the noun is a normal plural, with an added, no extra is added in the possessive, and it is pronounced accordingly; so "the neighbours' garden" is standard rather than "the neighbours's garden".
  • If the plural is not one that is formed by adding, an is added for the possessive, after the apostrophe: "children's hats", "women's hairdresser", "some people's eyes". These principles are universally accepted.
  • A few English nouns have plurals that are not spelled with a final but nevertheless end in an or a sound: "mice", "dice", "pence". In the absence of specific exceptional treatment in style guides, the possessives of these plurals are formed by adding an apostrophe and an in the standard way: "seven titmice's tails were found", "the dice's last fall was a seven", "his few pence's value was not enough to buy bread". These would often be rephrased, where possible: "the last fall of the dice was a seven".
    Basic rule (compound nouns)
Compound nouns have their singular possessives formed with an apostrophe and an added, in accordance with the rules given above: the Attorney-General's husband; the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports's prerogative; this Minister for Justice's intervention; her father-in-law's new wife.
  • In such examples, the plurals are formed with an that does not occur at the end: e.g., attorneys-general. A problem therefore arises with the possessive plurals of these compounds. Sources that rule on the matter appear to favour the following forms, in which there is both an added to form the plural, and a separate added for the possessive: the attorneys-general's husbands; successive Ministers for Justice's interventions; their fathers-in-law's new wives. Because these constructions stretch the resources of punctuation beyond comfort, in practice they are normally reworded: interventions by successive Ministers for Justice.
    Joint or separate possession
For two nouns joined by and, there are several ways of expressing possession, including:
Some grammars make no distinction in meaning between the two forms. Some publishers' style guides, however, make a distinction, assigning the "segregatory" meaning to the form "John's and Mary's" and the "combinatorial" meaning to the form "John and Mary's". A third alternative is a construction of the form "Jack's children and Jill's", which is always distributive, i.e. it designates the combined set of Jack's children and Jill's children.
When a coordinate possessive construction has two personal pronouns, the normal possessive inflection is used, and there is no apostrophe. The issue of the use of the apostrophe arises when the coordinate construction includes a noun and a pronoun. In this case, the inflection of only the last item may sometimes be, at least marginally, acceptable. The inflection of both is normally preferred, but there is a tendency to avoid this construction, too, in favour of a construction that does not use a coordinate possessive. Where a construction like "Jack's and your dogs" is used, the interpretation is usually "segregatory".
With other punctuation; compounds with pronouns
If the word or compound includes, or ends with, a punctuation mark, an apostrophe and an are still added in the usual way: "Westward Ho!'s railway station"; "Awaye!s Paulette Whitten recorded Bob Wilson's story"; Washington, D.C.'s museums..
  • If the word or compound already includes a possessive apostrophe, a double possessive results: Tom's sisters' careers; the head of marketing's husband's preference; the master of foxhounds' best dog's death. Many style guides, while allowing that these constructions are possible, advise rephrasing: the head of marketing's husband prefers that .... If an original apostrophe or apostrophe with occurs at the end, it is left by itself to serve both purposes: Our employees are better paid than McDonald's employees; Standard & Poor's indices are widely used: the fixed forms of McDonald's and Standard & Poor's already include possessive apostrophes. For similar cases involving geographical names, see [|below].
  • Similarly, the possessives of all phrases whose wording is fixed are formed in the same way:
  • *"Us and Thems inclusion on the album The Dark Side of the Moon
  • *You Am I's latest CD
  • *The 69'ers' drummer, Tom Callaghan
  • * His 'n' Hers's first track is called "Joyriders".
  • * Was She success greater, or King Solomon's Mines?