The apostrophe is the small but vital punctuation mark that makes the difference between knowing your sh*t and knowing you’re sh*t.
Yet, despite their importance, apostrophes are one of the most misunderstood punctuation marks. We’ve all smiled (or groaned) at the apostrophe slip-ups we see daily. Who hasn’t winced at greengrocers’ signs like “Tomatoe’s” and “Apple’s”? Not to mention numerous other abominations such as “Carvery’s”, “Crisp’s” “Tattoo’s” and “Open Sunday’s”.
But apostrophes are simple if we remember one simple rule:
That there are only two possible uses for an apostrophe.
Yep, just two. One is to show ownership of something – a possessive apostrophe – and the other being to denote a letter (or letters) left out of a word – known as a contraction or abbreviation apostrophe. It really is that simple.
Possessive apostrophe
For instance, here’s an example of a possessive apostrophe being used:
“Many believe a company’s carelessness over spelling and grammar could reflect a lack of attention to detail in other areas.”
Contraction apostrophe
And here, an abbreviation apostrophe has been used to represent a missing word – in this case ‘not’:
“Poor grammar doesn’t help you create a professional image.”
Admittedly, things can get slightly more complicated with words and names that already end in an ‘s’ but for a singular word ending in ‘s’ we just add ‘s – as in “the boss’s complaint”. And for plurals ending in ‘s’ we add only an apostrophe after the ‘s’, like this:
“Our clients’ marketing communications inspire confidence.”
If you’d like professional, grammatically correct marketing communications, please get in touch!
