We Need to Talk About Apostrophe’s - Liz Kessler

Before I start, let me just make two points. The first is…yes the apostrophe in the title was a joke, not a mistake.

The second point is this: We only know what we know, and I don’t think that it’s up to anyone else to mock us for the gaps in our knowledge.

To underline this point, let me put myself and my own ignorance out there for you.

I rarely read a newspaper nowadays. I stopped quite a few years ago when I found that it was too full of horrific things being done to people – usually children – and it took me days to get over each horrible item I read. This means that, nowadays, I rarely know what’s going on in the world and I often don’t know who people are when I probably should do. I’m not saying I’m completely clueless about politics or the world* but there are gaps in my knowledge which some people could find painful.

Equally, yes, I admit it, I am pained by some of the grammatical gaps in knowledge that I see around me every day. But just as I hope people don’t judge me too harshly for my gaps, I don’t blame the perpetrators of these grammar slips (let’s not call them crimes). But I do want to do my bit towards helping put them right.

The main one that bugs me, and the one that is probably the most badly abused and misused little squiggle in the world, is, of course the apostrophe. But how do you do anything about this without upsetting people, losing friends and generally getting a reputation as a grammatically uptight know-it-all?

The answer is – or might be – you write an ABBA post about it!

I think that most of the people who follow this blog are writers, bloggers, teachers, librarians etc. As such, I'm sure most of you know exactly how to use apostrophes. But I bet you’ve all got a friend who has at some point sent you a text saying “Hope your OK” and you’ve bitten your lip and replied to their kind sentiment rather than replying, as you might have wanted to, “Hope YOU’RE OK! YOU’RE YOU’RE YOU’RE!!!!!!”

So, right. I'm obviously not doing this for you. I'm not even doing it for your friends because, to be honest, most of them probably KNOW how to use apostrophes; they just don't care quite as much as I do if they accidentally use them incorrectly from time to time. Let's just say I'm doing it on the off chance that there's an occasional reader of this blog who's never been a hundred per cent sure when and where to put their apostrophes but is way past the point where it's deemed acceptable to ask. Like I would feel about, say, asking who's the shadow chancellor or something like that.

And yeah, I'm doing it for me. Partly just to get it out of my system and share my pain because I’m tired of seeing things like this around the place and weeping silently to myself.

With thanks to Candy Gourlay and Fiona Dunbar, who suggested that it might mean you literally get a dog's welcome - i.e. a lick on the face and a sniff of your bum - with your Cornish Cream Tea.

And partly because, actually, I've always quite fancied writing a guide to the correct usage of apostrophes.

So here is my (very brief) guide to the correct usage of apostrophes. 

For those of who don’t care, don’t have a problem with this or would rather move on to the next blog with the cute kitten photos on it** please skip the section in blue.

OK. Apostrophes have two main uses.

1. To show possession of something. Here’s how you do that.

Look at your sentence and decide who or what is the person (or animal or thing) that is owning the other thing. When you know who that is, put your apostrophe after it.

For example…

The boy’s toys. (All the toys are owned by one boy.)

The boys’ toys. (All the toys are owned by a group of boys.)

The lady’s house. (One lady lives there.)

The ladies’ house. (A house where lots of ladies live.) (Make of that what you will.)

A missing apostrophe at the Edinburgh Book Festival - just to show that even the experts make mistakes.

The only real exceptions, where you indicate possession without an apostrophe despite the word looking as if it might want one, are “its” and “your”.

Without getting into extended discussions about possessive pronouns, just remember, if they are being used in the context of possession, the words “its” and “your” do not EVER need an apostrophe. OK?

For example…

The cat licked its paw.

Your hair looks nice today.

No apostrophe. Think of the “its” and the “your” in this context in the same way as if they were “his” or “her” or “my”. No apostrophe.

The ONLY times that “its” becomes “it’s” or “your” becomes “you’re” are when they fit into rule number two…

2. To indicate that a letter (or letters) have been left out.

For example…

It’s an interesting blog but can we move on now please?

Same with “your” and “you’re”. If you are using the word instead of “you are” it is always “you’re”. Never (ever ever) “your”. Ever.

Hope you’re OK.

You’re a star.

You’re starting to labour the point a bit now.

And finally, there is NEVER any need to use an apostrophe just because something is a plural. Never. Never. Never.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

OK, that's the end of my lesson. You can come back now.

If in doubt, the main things to remember are:

1. If you are married to a writer/English teacher/other grammatically-obsessed person, you may need to double check your Facebook status updates before posting them, just to be on the safe side.

2. If you are a friend of a writer/English teacher/etc and are asking after their health, please bear in mind that your correct use of apostrophes in the phrase “Hope you’re OK” (as opposed to the incorrect “Hope your OK”) will be at least as pleasing to them as the fact that you are thinking about them. Probably a little more, actually.

3. If you live in a small seaside town in Cornwall and are in the process of writing your menus for this year’s summer season, please send them my way before going to press. I will happily proof read them for free, and you will have no need to hurt people’s eyes with your pizza’s or pastie’s.

Thanks for reading! 

* Especially now. In fact, I found the results of this week's elections and the advances made by far right organisations so horrifying and scary that the twenty-something-year-old me, who was very loud and active and political and who is still in there underneath everything else, is definitely planning a comeback.

** I think I might have implied that there were going to be photos of cute kittens. Just in case you were holding on for that, here you go...

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