by Susan Z. Miller

Created on: September 24, 2009

The apostrophe is one of the English language's most frequently used and abused marks of punctuation. A simple trip to the grocery store may reveal signs that advertise "Tomato's" and "Floridas Oranges." Apostrophes where there should be none; none where there should be some. It's apostrophe mayhem! Seemingly, there is quite a bit of misunderstanding within our society when it comes to the correct placement of the apostrophe. There are several common uses of this punctuation mark that, once they are remembered, will allow one to use the apostrophe with courage. Commit these uses to memory, and you will be on the road to punctuative success.

Possession:

Use an apostrophe to indicate possession, meaning to indicate to whom an object belongs. For example:
That is Billy's bike.
This is Sarah's lunch.
A trick that helps my English students to remember the correct usage of an apostrophe is to think of it as an arrow. The arrow must be added into the sentence to point at the person to whom the object belongs. The apostrophe curves up and over to the left in order to point to Sarah. This answers the question, to whom does this lunch belong? The apostrophe indicates that the lunch belongs to Sarah.

Note that an apostrophe is not used with possessive pronouns such as theirs or yours. No apostrophes here!

Do not use an apostrophe to indicate that there is more than one of something. An apostrophe does not indicate plurality. I once saw a sign on the side of the road that read, Puppy's for sale. The correct format would be, Puppies for sale, as I am quite certain the writer intended to indicate that there was more than one puppy available to a good home.

Contractions:

Use an apostrophe to indicate a missing letter when forming a contraction. Examples of this would be:
Haven't you already gone to the store today?
There's a package for you on the table.
When you start to think about it, we really use apostrophes in this manner, to form a contraction, all the time.

Its versus It's:

According to Mary Newton Bruder, creator of The Grammar Lady newspaper column, if there were an award for most common yet easy to avoid mistake, its would certainly win.
The word "its" without an apostrophe may only be used to indicate possession. Now, I know that in #1, I stated that an apostrophe is used to show possession. "Its" is an exception. Correct examples of "its" include:
The dog licked its paw.
The clock stopped working because its batteries are dead.
This indicates the paw that belongs

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