Apostrophes

Apostrophes are often used for the omission of letters, forming the possessive of nouns and to indicate plurals of certain lowercase letters.

To begin we review what is probably one of the first things we learned in elementary school. The omission of letters is often times explained by teachers as "letter a steps out of line to use the bathroom. Apostrophe steps in and holds his spot while he is gone". That explanation is perfect. Examples include:

Would've = Would have

Isn't = Is not

I'm = I am

She'll = She will

'60 = 1960

'99 = 1999

Basically the second word is shortened and attached to the first. The use of apostrophes when applied to years is heard in spoken language when one leaves out the Nineteen when talking about the Sixties.

The next subject is where things get fun. You want to say something belongs to a noun so you put an apostrophe. For example:

The guitarist's guitar

The king's car

The horse's hay

Now what if you are trying a possessive for a noun that is plural? You place the apostrophe normally but exclude the 's' as such:

The married couples' argument was never resolved and the couples hated each other.

Here the sentence refers to more than one couple and so there is no 's' placed after the apostrophe. The next part will deal with mistakes everyone make, in this case the difference between 'its' and 'it's'. Its is a possessive pronoun meaning belonging to it while "it's" is a contraction for it is. An example of this where it is confusing would be:

Its the King!

It's the King!

While they may seem similar, they are not. The top say that what ever it is belongs to the King while the bottom announces the King arriving. More errors and their corrections are listed below:

His's notebook

His/one's/anybody's notebook

Who's train ticket is this?

Whose train ticket is this?

I have waited nine hours' to get a ticket!

I have waited nine hours to get a ticket!

The words are one should look at are in bold. In all cases the correct choice is the bottom one because apostrophes are not used for personal pronouns, the relative pronoun who, or for noun plurals.

The next one is more typographical than grammatical and reads that if one is discussing more than one lowercase letter than use an apostrophe to indicate. For example:

a's

or

as

The correct choice according to the rule is the top one other wise we have created a whole new word.

So, in conclusion, we use apostrophes when we want to omit letters, form the possessive of nouns, but not for personal pronouns, the relative pronoun who, or for noun plurals and finally if discussing more than one lowercase letter use an apostrophe so you don't make it a completely different word.