Keep this in mind, especially when you are writing about specific decades, such as the ’60s or the ’90s. Word processors tend to do this by default, as they assume you are beginning a quote. Apostrophes that fall at the beginning of a contraction are often mistyped as left-hand single quotation marks, when the apostrophe is actually identical to the right-hand single quotation mark. In the second example, take note of the apostrophe at the beginning of ’twas. “ ’Twas the night before Christmas,” he said. What do you do with the apostrophe when you’re talking about things that belong to more than one person? When one thing belongs to two or more people jointly, make only the final name possessive: In fact, for some of these pronouns, adding an apostrophe forms a contraction instead of a possessive (see the table above). Note that none of these forms use an apostrophe. The relative possessive pronoun whose is also frequently the victim of apostrophe abuse. It’s your, yours, hers, its, ours, their, and theirs that tend to cause the confusion. Most writers don’t have trouble with the possessive pronouns my, mine, his, her, and our.
Personal pronouns, unlike regular nouns, do not use apostrophes to form possessives.
If you don’t have a style guide, it’s OK to just pick one of the methods, as long as you don’t switch back and forth within the same document. Use whichever style matches the style guide you use for your writing. They vary a bit, depending on what type of noun you are making into a possessive. The rules about forming possessive nouns probably cause the most apostrophe confusion.
CODA2 APOSTROPHE FULL
If you’re writing something very formal, you may want to avoid using them except in cases like o’clock, where the full phrase ( of the clock ) truly is rare. She’d (she had, she would), I’d (I had, I would)Ĭontractions are usually considered to be relatively casual. They’re (they are), we’re (we are), you’re (you are) Decade names are often contracted as well: the ’60s ( the 1960s ). And, of course, in the American South, you will probably encounter y’all ( you all ). Occasionally, you might see e’er (instead of ever ) in poetry. They might write somethin’ to represent the way people often don’t pronounce the final g of something in speech. Some writers use less common contractions when they want to represent a particular style of speech. Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly
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