Punctuation: How The Apostrophe is like Batman

The apostrophe, as you know, is a hard-working and much-abused piece of punctuation. People who have not had the benefit of Miss Nichola’s teaching are often clueless about what to do with the poor thing, and throw it haphazardly at any word involving an s. You, however, know better! For the apostrophe has TWO (count them!) important jobs. Neither of these jobs involves sitting around looking pointlessly pretty – the apostrophe is not the bimbo of the punctuation world. Instead it works tirelessly to either:

INDICATE WHERE SOME LETTERS ARE MISSING or

INDICATE OWNERSHIP.

And that’s it. It’s actually pretty simple, if you manage not to panic and just pay attention.

1) MISSING LETTERS (aka “Contractions”)

Now, what you need to remember is that the English are lazy speakers. We’d rather squash our words together than say each individual word. Thus “We would” becomes contracted down to “We’d”. And the apostrophe hangs in the air above the letters, pointing down at the space where all those other letters used to be. Here are some examples:

She + will = She’ll

I + would = I’d

We + have = we’ve
They would + have = They would’ve

Does + not = doesn’t

Can + not = can’t

You know this stuff already, really. If you’re not sure, ask yourself whether the word you’re writing used to be two words. That should help you with spotting the difference between things that sound the same, but are actually quite different, like your and you’re, or there and they’re. Ask yourself whether the word is actually two words squashed together, needing an apostrophe in the middle.

2)INDICATING OWNERSHIP

This is a completely different job that the apostrophe also does in its spare time. It’s kind of a Bruce Wayne/Batman deal – yes, okay, it’s still the apostrophe, but now it’s put on a mask and a cape and some tights and gone out to fight crime busy sorting out who owns what. Because it’s just THAT awesome at multi-tasking. When it indicates ownership, it usually brings along the letter s as a sidekick (kind of like Robin is Batman's sidekick).

In various other languages, when you want to indicate that something belongs to someone else, you have to use quite a lot of words:

That is the rant of Miss Nichola.

But, see, the English haven’t the patience for all those words. Instead, we take the short cut of saying

That is Miss Nichola’s rant.

Because it’s quicker, and, basically, we’re lazy.

(This laziness is the key to understanding how the language changes over time. Well, that and the fact that we’ve been invaded by nearly everybody capable of picking up a sword, getting in a boat and crossing the channel to conquer us. Every time that happened, once the screaming and bleeding was over we had to learn their language, and so our own language is now a chaotic and flexible sort of word soup full of broken rules. Eventually we got wise to this, built our own boats, picked up our own swords and flags, and went off to impose our crazy mixed-up language on lots of other people. Such, alas, is the way of the world.)

So, anyway, if I’m talking about what my cat eats, I could say:

the food of my cat.

But it’s quicker to just slap an apostrophe and an s after the owner, and say:

my cat’s food.

Easy as that. Just put an apostrophe and then an s after the owner (or owners), and you don't have to do this whole "The something of the something" business.

So far so good? Okay. Here’s where it gets SLIGHTLY more complicated. But only slightly. Pay attention and keep your brain switched on and you should be fine, really.

Ready? Right…

INDICATING OWNERSHIP WHEN THERE IS MORE THAN ONE OWNER.

Right, this is where we get to that whole thing of putting an apostrophe after an s that is already there instead of adding an s and then an apostrophe.

It’s not as complicated as you think.

Promise.

So, suppose I have more than one cat. (God forbid.) Following the rule I’ve just given you above, we should logically be able to say:

That is the food of my cats

Or, to be quicker:

That is my cats’s food.

But we don’t bother with an s after the apostrophe this time, even though logically we should. Because, remember – we’re lazy. (Also, it makes you sound like you just swallowed a snake if you try saying CATS’S.) So instead of adding an apostrophe and an s after the word CATS (which already has a perfectly good S sitting right there at the end) we just add an apostrophe and leave it at that, making the word CATS’. Because it’s quicker. And that way we know that something belonged to some CATS, rather than to one CAT. So instead of "That is the food of my cats" we have:

That is my cats' food.

Read that through again, if you’re feeling a bit uncertain.

Remember: the apostrophe isn't flying over to the word just because it's spotted a letter s and wants a bit of a cuddle. The apostrophe is still busy doing its job of showing that something belongs to something else. If there's already a perfectly good letter s sitting there at the end of the word when the apostrophe flies in to do its job, there's no need to put another letter s there.

It’s actually not all that tricky – and that’s really the only tricky bit!

...

...

...

...OKAY, I LIED ABOUT THERE ONLY BEING ONE TRICKY BIT.

D:

No, no, don't run away! This next bit IS a bit annoying, but I know that you can handle it. I have faith in you!

So, to recap: The Humble Apostrophe is an unsung hero who slaves away at two thankless jobs: making sure that owners keep possession of things that are important to them ( Jack’s guitar, Pann’s brain, Miss Nichola’s patience etc etc), and ALSO making our lives easier by pointing to the places where letters have fallen out when two words are squashed together (wouldn’t, I’d, there’s, he’ll, we’ve etc etc).

Still with me?

Right. So, all of that is perfectly true, and if you remember it you’ll almost never go wrong.

...EXCEPT (and I don’t know which genius came up with this – I’m guessing one of those eighteenth or nineteenth century scholars back in the UK who decided to while away the long hours by imposing lots of whacky rules on the English language for the lulz. This is what happens when people don’t have television yet, or Facebook, or World of Warcraft) there is one exception to the rule…

It’s and Its

IT’S is always and only short for IT IS.

You can’t use IT'S for something belonging to IT.

For something belonging to IT, you say ITS instead, without the apostrophe.

Yes, it’s crazy. Yes, Captain Logic is not steering the bus on this one. And, really, I’m sorry – but that’s what we’re stuck with. Some old dead guy in a dusty wig decided to make this into a rule a couple of hundred years ago, and unfortunately it’s stuck. Just accept it and move on. It’s only quite a small rule, really. It’s easier than learning your 8 times table. I know it’s stupid, but we’re stuck with it. Sorry about that.

(If it helps, there are other stupid rules invented by those old dead guys in wigs that we can TOTALLY ignore, like “don’t split the infinitive” and “don’t end a sentence with a preposition”. These rules were made up by crazy people who were pretending English is Latin, and that it had to work the way Latin does, because Latin was seen as more high class. But English works perfectly well, and doesn’t need to pretend to be Latin, or borrow Latin rules, so I’m not going to ask you to learn those ones. Just the it’s/its rule. Go on. Please. It’s good for you. You’ll thank me one day, honestly. And if you don’t, I’ll mock you mercilessly.)