In a writing workshop I conducted recently for a corporate client’s graduate trainees, I used the apostrophe as an example of how some of the English language’s more arcane ‘rules’ can baffle second-language writers and learners. This provoked an interesting reaction from my bright, engaged audience.
Some – roughly half – were of the opinion that there isn’t much utility to mastering the apostrophe and would either not use it at all in any situation, or would go to great lengths to create sentences that avoid having to use it. This latter tendency gives rise to those clumsy ‘pen of my aunt’ constructions which, while not incorrect, can make for tedious reading – a barrier to transparent communication.
The other half were determined to grapple with the apostrophe and learn it. This was mainly because they had grasped that while many argue that this anomalous piece of punctuation is on the way out, others still look at it as a kind of kitemark that the writer is fluent in English. Or, to flip this idea, many (including a senior manager at this company with a habit of sending documents back with corrections) use the apostrophe as a differentiator between themselves (the fluent) and those who aren’t quite in the club.
I urged my audience to do a little work to get the apostrophe right as it can still be useful in avoiding ambiguous or imprecise language and creating clear, readable text – but also because it’s worth not giving your critics a tool to use against you, even subconsciously.
So what are the rules of the apostrophe? I’d summarise them as:
When used with the letter s, the apostrophe indicates possession – so don’t use it to indicate plurals. Ever. This confusion arises because English also uses the s to make plurals – in most cases.
The apostrophe is also used in contractions (don’t, can’t, won’t) to show where a letter is lost when two words are joined.
When using it to indicate possession, the basic rule is: for single ownership, put the apostrophe before the s (one dog’s tail); for multiple ownership, put it after the s (many dogs’ tails). If unsure, an easy test is to ask yourself, how many dogs?
Of course there are exceptions. When referring to our dog as it, no apostrophe is used to indicate possession (its tail). When you see the word it’s, this is always a contraction of it is.
Another exception to the possessives rule is where English has special forms of plural, like ‘women’. One woman’s possession is quite easy to denote with the apostrophe before the s, but many women present a challenge – because ‘women’ is already a plural without the addition of an s, the apostrophe doesn’t go at the end to denote many women – so it’s women’s changing rooms.
The apostrophe tends to stir strong emotions, with its defenders decrying those who can’t or won’t use it, and its detractors calling time on its tenure. It can be an annoyance, but getting it right shouldn’t be too much of a problem: the basics are relatively simple, and as I told my seminar audience, probably the best way of mastering it is to consciously look out for it in others’ writing and challenge yourself to emulate how they do it. Why avoid what you can easily fix and demonstrate your wordsmithing prowess?
