Pity the poor apostrophe. Just when it thinks it can park off unnoticed in a quiet corner somewhere, along comes another berk who doesn’t know how to use one. And you know what apostrophical illiterates do for fun, don’t you? If they see an ‘s’, they fling one in. Before it, after it, it doesn’t matter. But if there’s an ‘s’ there sure as hell will be an apostrophe.
I know I touched on this in an earlier blog, but my rant still does not seem to have stamped out the practice. It seems further punctuition is warranted (no, it’s not a literal). To anybody who cares about words, sentences, punctuation and all the rest, this practice is infuriating. If ill-used apostrophes mean nothing to you, I can understand that you just won’t get why it seems important to us. But it is. So please, lower our stress levels by following a simple rule. If you don’t, and never will, understand when to use an apostrophe and when not to use one, just don’t ever use one at all. Rather leave them out than force them into places they do not belong.
You won’t always be right, but you’ll be right more of the time, and people like me may live ten years longer than we will if you persist in driving our stress levels into the ozone layer.
I suggest this because it seems to me that there are far more instances when an apostrophe is not needed than when one is. It stands to reason: there are loads of nouns, and consequently loads of plurals. And plurals, with few exceptions, do not take an apostrophe. (And dare one ask menu writers/writer’s to pay special attention.)
So, those of you who are about to write ‘toilet’s’ on a blackboard to tell people where they should go to pee, either leave the apostrophe out or explain to us what it is that the toilet possesses that you are keen for us to know about. The toilet’s seat, what? The toilet’s water?
But if you want to tell us that there is more than one toilet, and that that is where we will find them, lose the apostrophe, dummy. And if you want to tell us about the specials on offer in your restaurant today, you might want to write Today’s Specials on the blackboard, because they are the specials you are offering today, i.e. the specials of (possessive) the day. But no, the same guy who will add an apostrophe to Toilets will leave it out of Today’s Specials. The apostrophically-challenged are like that.
When to write its or it’s? You may know this, but for those who don’t, perhaps this will help: even people who work with words sometimes have to stop and look at its or it’s again to check that they haven’t slipped up. I do. The simple possessive rule applies in reverse here, hence the difficulty. It’s, whereas you would expect it to refer to something that belongs to it, actually means it is, the apostrophe taking the place of the ‘i’ in is. Its, by contrast, is possessive, so you’re referring to something that belongs to ‘it’, yet oddly not using an apostrophe in this exception.
To practice, and bearing in mind the above, try fixing up the following sentence:
‘Its evident that the toilets seat is one of todays specials.’
If in this instance you didn’t add an apostrophe to toilets – sorry, caught you out.
And if, after reading the above, you added an apostrophe before the second ‘s’ in specials, there is no hope for you.
By the way, the little marks at each end of that sentence are not apostrophes. They’re quotation marks. Yes, yes, I know they look the same but … oh never mind.
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40 Responses to “The apostrophical catastrophe of being punctuationarily illiterate”
Required reading for anyone who’s going to attempt to write: Eats, Shoots and Leaves…
The problem with these articles (and do I just love them) is that the people you actually need to reach either possibly don’t read them, potentially don’t understand them or probably just see you (or anyone else who writes such) as pompous and supercilious nerds who have nothing better to do and need to find the modern world.
Me, I like little better than being a pompous and supercilious nerd so pls ensure that you carry on writting note’s of these ones kind’s coz its fun. Am off now to put my jean pant’s and go to the shop’s to buy my weeks grocery’s and take back my neighbours scissor she borrowed me.
i know the misuse isn’t limited to south africa, but this is the place where i have this barbarism the most.
i know that it’s because, in limited situations, dutch [and therefore afrikaans] permits [’s] to make a plural, but there is no excuse for the kak english grammar in these parts.
i’m actually reminded of a letter that a LAWYER wrote me last year, where the grammar was so bad that i wrote back saying, “i will not respond to any of your missives until you write with better grammar. i used to deal with a court where the judges would routinely throw out cases where the grammar in the submissions to the court was poor.”
he’s never written back.
but then again, my good grammar is why i get paid the big bucks [okay, maybe not big, but big enough for me to live here fairly comfortably most of the time], and i should just be happy that the quality of english is poor enough that i can be able to make a decent living correcting it.
There is the other restaurant menu feature - paninis, tramezzinis - both are plural without the s as they are Italian! Then banana’s and piano’s - I have a permanently wet hankie from crying over misuse!
The way I wuz teached (english gramar skool)made me equally alergic to roveing apostroughies.
I am still unsure (& look forward to being quickly enlightened) about the plural / before after S rule, e.g.
I know that where both the possessor & the possessed(!)are plural, the Ap goes after the s as in, i.e. the soldiers’ rifles.
What happens if one soldier has 5 rifles, however?
Does it stay the same or does it revert as if singular, i.e: the soldier’s rifles
And then, say 5 soldiers have to share one rifle between them. The soldiers’ rifle seems wrong, but it’s the only way of communicating that there is more than one soldier involved.
Hurrah I am not alone. Was considering seeking medical advice for my obsessive compulsive apostrophe correction syndrome. But happily it turns out I am just a pompous and supercilious nerd - yay
I give up. (Most)SA writers (even the good ones) do not care for proper punctuation. I’ve never seen any SA publication use ‘i.e.,’ and ‘e.g.,’ correctly, either.
Yes, I am one of those pesky readers who will email you a list of errors on your site or in your offline publication. But it’s always accompanied with a pleasant note. Promise.
But I die 3498 deaths when I’m confronted with sentences consisting of 64 letters, but only one comma.
i thought the problem was when one expects to see a period and it doesn’t show up.
[thank you, i’ll be here all week.]
@judith
moving a word from use from one language to another doesn’t count. now, i’ve never seen a gnocco or, outside of italy, a proper panino, but i have been a smart-ass and given someone a single lasagna and a single spaghetto.
anche, lei ha mai intentato d’avvere solamente una cipolla sul suo hamburger oppoure sul suo hotdog? non? vede il problema coll’altre lingue ed il suo uso in inglese? i probleme sono anche trovati cuando usa parole inglese nel altre lingue. so let’s leave loanwords alone, especially when there are enough problems with bona fide english words, mmkay?
@bob
the plural possessive rule:
if the plural ends in s, the apostrophe goes after the final s and you’re done. soldiers’ = belonging to more than one soldier; rifles’ = belonging to more than one rifle.
“the soldiers’ rifles’ triggers were malfunctioning.”
while this is grammatically correct, it’s a bit unwieldy, and should be rewritten as the following:
“the triggers on the soldiers’ rifles were malfunctioning.”
…unless you’re quoting someone verbatim.
and while the soldiers’ rifle [one rifle shared between five soldiers] is correct, you would, in writing, generally want to clean up the syntax so that it would not be so unwieldy.
“the soldiers’ lone rifle” is a start, but usually, you’d probably have to throw things around in a prepositional phrase. prepositional phrases are your friends. use them.
—-
now, if the plural does not end in s, then to show possession, you add [’s].
men’s = belonging to more than one man [and this is the construction for any word ending in “men” where it refers to a singular ending in “man”, e.g., workmen, congressmen, businessmen.]
geese’s = belonging to more than one goose
mice’s = belonging to more than one mouse
–
when you have a word where the singular and plural are the same, [e.g., “deer”, “fish”, “moose”] it’s better to structure the sentence to denote context between singular and plural, usually by the use of a collective pronoun or also just restructuring the sentence to denote plurality.
“the deer’s antlers were removed.” - one is unaware if this is one deer or several deer. but in the following:
“once the deer were found, their antlers were removed.”
is much clearer in showing that is more than one deer whose antlers were removed and not just one particular deer.
–
also, there are weird words like species and scisscors, which end in s, don’t go to -es for a plural, and therefore just get the apostrophe for both singular and plural.
–
so, um, does all that make sense?
–
@ tony
you know, one of the reasons we’ve abandoned single quotes in primary use in american english was to avoid the “is it an apostrophe or not” issue. personally, i prefer the french way of marking quotes, and think the german way is, erm, daft.
Bob…Always after the S for plurals ending in S. So the soldiers’ rifle. The object of their possession is completely irrelevant, only the number of possessors.
Sounds like the British Army.
Before S for plurals not ending in S like children’s….women’s day…
Same thing for multiple possessors…the children’s great-aunts’ birthday cake. The great-aunts must be twins.
Oh, the irony, considering the quality of spelling, grammar and punctuation on blogs. I wish you would employ a sub-editor as a moderator; it’s really hard to remove the ink from my screen after my compulsive adding/removing of apostrophes, correcting spelling mistakes and rewriting sentences. Of course, not even the best sub-editor could turn some of the absolute crap that people write into meaningful comments. But at least it would look neat.
The full word for that instrument is “pianoforte” (Italian for “quiet-loud”, to separate it from volume-unmodulated prior keyboard instruments such as a harpsichord. )
“Piano” has lost its tail-end “-forte” and the apostrophe legitimately replaces the missing bit, just like “it’s” in “It’s lovely” has an apostrophe for the missing letter I in the contraction “it is”.
I’ve never seen piano’s in proper publications. Pianos seem far better, and cleaner. There is only one legitimate reason to use apostrophes when creating plurals: lower case letters such as i’s and e’s and f’s.
This discussion is quite ridiculous. Wingeing about poor punctuation will change nothing: it merely exposes one as another “grammar Nazi” with nothing better to do with their lives that throw out sniveling analyses on a subject rather few sane people are interested in.
Piano’s opens up a whole new topic.
The apostrophe indicates that something is missing,as Jon points out. But it’s not pretty, as Joy-Mari rightly says.
Even the so-called possessive follows the same rule, it indicates that ‘his’ as in ‘John, his mark’ has been shortened to ‘John’s mark’.
So avo’s and telephone no’s, would be correct, as would CD’s and DVD’s, but maybe aesthetics should hold the day.
As a professional writer, I believe that pedantry shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with communication.
Ever read articles on iol.co.za? The grammar there is notoriously bad — I’ve given up writing nasty missives to the editor — too many other things to do in a day.
Thanks people, for all the advice re soldier’s rifle, etc.
However, all this stuff about pianos & lids leaves me somewhat cold.
I would simply have said “piano lid” ( suppose strictly speaking, if doing this, it should be written into”pianolid”.
Because, who ever says “he turned the door’s handle” - instead of just door handle (or doorhandle)?
@Elisa: Phew. I’m so glad I’m not the only one! But perhaps you should write sweet little notes and send them a list of corrections.
@Robert James Basil Duigan: Whingeing, no. Complaining to the right people about their publication’s lack of standards might get them to be more careful.
Hey everyone, Robert thinks we’re grammar Nazis! Let’s all stop caring about proper punctuation and application of the rules of the English language! Sorry Robert, that way lies anarchy - you’ll need to read Lynn Truss’s (Truss’? Apparently either is correct) “Talk to the hand” to understand why.
*rolls eyes*
When I read “Eats, shoots and leaves” I nearly wept with joy: how lovely to discover that I am not alone in wanting to carry around a thick black marker for correcting signs, posters and so forth.
Elisa: is the grammar really that awful on iol.co.za?
There’s a way simpler solution to all this.
Just invoke the spelling and grammar checker before pasting your gem of human insight into the comment box.
It may not convert the marginally literate blogger into a literary genius, but will ameliorate the infuriating misuse and mangling of language stemming from our hopelessly inadequate schooling system
i’m actually reminded of a letter that a LAWYER wrote me last year, where the grammar was so bad that i wrote back saying, “i will not respond to any of your missives until you write with better grammar. i used to deal with a court where the judges would routinely throw out cases where the grammar in the submissions to the court was poor.”
I for one, will forgive you for not capitalizing the personal pronoun in your missive. However as a member of the public who conducted his own legal matters (and won 98% of my matters) I had one particular judge decline to entertain one writ because I had a comer instead of a colon. (silly me for not proofreading ) and when asked why - I was told “I do not like people representing themselves because they are ignorant of the law”
Rewritten and resubmitted - and before the same judge the matter went ahead - but when I facetiously pointed out that the opposing lawyer had made several glaring mistakes in his response, I was basically told that “he is a lawyer, he is allowed to make them and I still do not like people representing themselves” …… sigh
@Kerry
Required reading for anyone who’s going to attempt to write: Eats, Shoots and Leaves…
If you are a Wombat it is correct to write eat shoots and leaves
@Bob
Reminds me of the old story when a senior officer was giving a “pep talk” to his troops saying …. “we are out numbered by 10 to one - go out and do yourselves proud”
Later, when following up from the rear (like all good commanders) he saw one soldier sitting down and smoking (as all good soldiers do in time of whatever….)
He asked “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE…..?????”
To which the soldier replied calmly …”I have killed my 10″
However my pet peeve is the continual misuse of words, as in
@Jon
I stand corrected - only noticed it when I sobered up.
Anyway, seems this blog’s got legs - I had no idea S’effricans cared so much for grammar.
So, what do we think of the vogue of (unknown people - not Shakespeare) coining new words & changing parts of speech, e.g.:
“impacting” as a transitive verb “it impacted my way forward (ugh)”
Making nouns into verbs:
“He summitted Everest.”; “he podiumed at the Grand Prix.” I feel most uncomfortable with these - as I have always done with “He wrote me,” although the latter is long established in the US.
Thing is, who are these people, otherwise mostly communications illiterate, who think they are entitled to add new grammar to the lexicon of centuries of application & wisdom?
And there’s the ugly 18C “gotten” that has survived in the US vernacular but which is sadly achieving a new vogue amongst the trendily ignorant/ esp. DJs.) Who would ever want to pick up the Americans’ appalling habits?
@Bob: I like American English’ grammar. British English’ grammar is vague. Yes,some Americans do use ‘managarese’, but you wouldn’t find it in respected publications such as The New York Times.
What do you think of South Efrican, though (this is a deliberate misspelling)? Are we still influenced by British English, or have we become too influenced by American English? Should we not write ‘at the weekend’, and not ‘on the weekend’? Are we creating our own grammar here?
I have a fondness for vogue words. Shoot me. That’s how language evolves. Shakespeare didn’t even know how to write his own name, so why should he be the only person allowed to create new words?
@ Bob …..
“He summitted Everest.”; “he podiumed at the Grand Prix.” I feel most uncomfortable with these - as I have always done with “He wrote me,” although the latter is long established in the US.
Bob - you among many are making the massive mistake that Americans actually read, write and speak English, a long held fallacy.
In actuality, they are only fluent in American … but then again, I suppose I could stand corrected on that one might suppose …. perhaps?
However, as for “He wrote me ….. a letter (or note)” that is typical of how most “yanks” think - they are, in the main in the appalling habit of cutting off a lot of things, like the ending of words and even sentences, much to the detriment of those who can not think down to their levels.
@Joy-Mari
After googling (sorry about that) “Conjugal Visits” and led into the world of those who had been caught, rather than into several hours of browsing through some interesting, but somewhat pedantic, and in my opinion some archaic thinking, after all language is an ever evolving thought process and a way of expression.
As a Courts appointed interpreter/translator I made a short trip back to the country where the language was gained and was amazed at the change, and the introduction of many introduced words so, like English, every language moves along.
However, I really liked one quote from one of the links ….
“Do you get grief from grammar snobs?” she responds, “…the more rude someone is, the more likely they are to be wrong”
How true, how true that comment and that sentiment - and not only in this little blog!
@joy-Mari ….. “Conjugal Visits, nogal. *She blushes* So sorry, I meant Conjugate Visits…..”
Damnnnn - and here was poor hot blooded me thinking I was almost onto a steamy and seamy night of ……
It would never have worked out anyway …. A long hike across Oz, then a bit of a swim over to Durban (maybe?) and then?
Bloody Hell - I’d be too buggered to do anything except sleep - so much for my staying power - but if you put on a decent spread, then I would probably wake up for dinner perhaps?
[…] That got me thinking that I might have to tighten up my grammar a bit. Just a bit. It won’t hurt, right? So that’s what I have been doing these past seven months. I’ve been reading Grammar Girl, Copyblogger, Words to the Wise and many other language related blogs. Yes, I’ve also been reading Conjugate Visits and even made the faux pas of calling it Conjugal Visits… […]
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Tony Jackman is a journalist, budding playwright and sometime chef. He's written two plays, An Influence of Ghosts and Blue Train Coming, and back in the day wrote loads of songs. He paints a bit in watercolours when he remembers to, and apart from that he massages words and pushes grammar for a nice little magazine called myweek.
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Required reading for anyone who’s going to attempt to write: Eats, Shoots and Leaves…
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