Apostrophes

By ZARAH WALPOLE

"The devil's in the details." You've heard the advice (probably over and over again) that grammatical errors in your marketing materials or correspondence will spoil the professional image you want to project. The most pervasive error I see, particularly on (often very expensive) signage, is incorrect use of apostrophes. To help combat this problem I'm providing a short primer on avoiding the most common errors involving apostrophes.

Apostrophes serve a number of different functions. Keeping these different functions straight will help you make the right choices when inserting (or not) apostrophes.

First, an apostrophe is used to indicate the omission of letters:

Can not becomes can't.
Do not becomes don't.
"The devil is in the details" becomes "The devil's in the details.

And (sadly often used incorrectly):
It is or it has becomes it's. (It's hard to remember how to use apostrophes correctly.)

Second, an apostrophe is used to indicate possession:

The dog's toy.

That's simple enough. We now know that the toy belongs to the dog. Where it gets tricky, is when the possessor is a plural.
So here is the rule in two parts.

Part 1: When you are dealing with a regular plural possessor (that is one that ends in an "s"), the apostrophe comes after the "s".

The dogs' toys. (Now we know that the toys belong to more than one dog).

Part 2: When the possessor is plural but does not end in an "s", the apostrophe comes before the "s":

The children's playground.
The women's movement.

If you are dealing with ordinary plurals or words that end in an "s" and are not trying to denote possession or indicate the absence of letters, please do not start adding apostrophes willy nilly.

Which brings me back to the its / it's dilemma (incorrectly) confronted by so many people. "Its" is a possessive pronoun - just like "mine", "yours", "his" and "theirs" - so no apostrophe is needed. If you want to say "We provide service at its best", you must not add an apostrophe. The rule to remember is: If you can replace the word with "it is" or "it has" than the word is "it's". If not, use "its".

In a similar vein, here are a few more rules that may help:

• If you can replace the word with "who is" or "who has", then the word is "who's". If not, use "whose".
• If you can replace the word with "they are", then the word is "they're". If not, use "their" (belongs to them) or "there" (a place).
• If you can replace the word with "there is", then the word is "there's". If not, use "theirs".
• If you can replace the word with "you are", then the word is "you're". If not, use "your".

And don't despair. I don't think anyone uses apostrophes correctly all the time. (You can only imagine what a nightmare it was to write this article) That's what proofreading is for. I always try to review my writing to check that the apostrophes I've used need to be there and that I haven't inserted any randomly - in fact, I just caught myself adding an apostrophe to "apostrophes" in my last sentence, which would have been an embarrassing conclusion to my column.

 

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The above is not intended to constitute legal advice. Please contact a lawyer to clarify your legal rights.