Stamp out Apostrophe abuse
Sep. 18th, 2006 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
justalurkrPeriodically, I feel moved to post a reminder somewhere:
Apostrophes are your friends. They shortened the journey to sentence completion with contractions. They illuminate our understanding of who owns what in possessives.
Short Digression
Apostrophes have nothing whatsoever to do with making things plural. NOTHING, I tell you! [puffpuff] The pluralization of nouns is the business of another rant, but I will say this: it mainly involves the addition of the letter "s" to a word, sometimes an "es" and occasionally an "a," but NOT AN APOSTROPHE.
Digression ends.
In the matter of contractions:
They are = They're. Not there or their, nor yet there's (there is) or theirs (thing belonging to them.) Really. Also, no such thing as they'res. I'm not making this up.
It is = it's. That's a contraction, yes. It is not now, nor has it ever been, a possessive. (OK, maybe it was in some dark corner of history before there were rules and stuff; English-speakers got up to all manner of depraved perversity back then; but it isn't now.)
In the matter of possessives:
Thing belonging to it = its. (See "theirs.") "It" is a pronoun, not a noun. Theirs, its. No apostrophe in this set of possessives. We reserve that for:
Charles's dog: the dog belonging to Charles.
The Charles' dog: the dog belonging to all those people over there named Charles.
Charles's mistress' dog: the dog belonging to the paramour of Charles. If the noun already ends in two letters "s," this is an exception to the 's.
The Charles' mistress' dog: the dog belonging tothat whore the extremely flexible & open-minded paramour of all those people over there named Charles, who all ought to be less cheeseparing and each get their own mistress.
Grammar lecture (most of which was cribbed from Strunk & White Elements of Style) ended. I feel much better now.
Apostrophes are your friends. They shortened the journey to sentence completion with contractions. They illuminate our understanding of who owns what in possessives.
Short Digression
Apostrophes have nothing whatsoever to do with making things plural. NOTHING, I tell you! [puffpuff] The pluralization of nouns is the business of another rant, but I will say this: it mainly involves the addition of the letter "s" to a word, sometimes an "es" and occasionally an "a," but NOT AN APOSTROPHE.
Digression ends.
In the matter of contractions:
They are = They're. Not there or their, nor yet there's (there is) or theirs (thing belonging to them.) Really. Also, no such thing as they'res. I'm not making this up.
It is = it's. That's a contraction, yes. It is not now, nor has it ever been, a possessive. (OK, maybe it was in some dark corner of history before there were rules and stuff; English-speakers got up to all manner of depraved perversity back then; but it isn't now.)
In the matter of possessives:
Thing belonging to it = its. (See "theirs.") "It" is a pronoun, not a noun. Theirs, its. No apostrophe in this set of possessives. We reserve that for:
Charles's dog: the dog belonging to Charles.
The Charles' dog: the dog belonging to all those people over there named Charles.
Charles's mistress' dog: the dog belonging to the paramour of Charles. If the noun already ends in two letters "s," this is an exception to the 's.
The Charles' mistress' dog: the dog belonging to
Grammar lecture (most of which was cribbed from Strunk & White Elements of Style) ended. I feel much better now.
