Help With Apostrophes
The apostrophe - whether and where to use it - is a topic that seems to cause endless confusion. I've even had publishers phoning me up for advice about it!
I did write a while ago in this blog about a rule taught to me by my old English teacher Mr Sanders, which is great for checking where you should put the apostrophe in possessive expressions such as the children's ward and the boys' bedroom. However, I admit it doesn't cover every possible use of apostrophes.
So I was pleased to discover the other day a very useful Squidoo website (or lens, to use the Squidoo jargon) on this subject. It's called The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes, and it covers the correct use of apostrophes in (1) contractions, (2) possessive nouns, and (3) nested quotations (i.e. quotes within quotes). Personally I wouldn't really regard the latter as apostrophes - in my view they are single inverted commas or quotation marks - but I suppose they do look the same as apostrophes!
The site also discusses two common scenarios where apostrophes are NOT required but often get used incorrectly. These are plural nouns (e.g. potato's and banana's) and possessive pronouns such as its (which when used in the possessive sense does NOT take an apostrophe). Even experienced writers sometimes slip up here.
One thing I particularly like about The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes is the use of illustrations to support the points made. There are also some entertaining "What's wrong with this picture?" quizzes. These depict shop signs or menus where an apostrophe has been incorrectly used or omitted. You can check the answer by hovering your cursor over the photo or scrolling down to the foot of the page. Some of the mistakes are actually a bit hard to see, but that's just a problem with reproducing the photos and not really the site creator's fault.
There is also a gallery where you can submit your own photograph of incorrectly used apostrophes, and links to an interactive quiz about apostrophes on the website of Lynne Truss (the author of the best-selling guide to punctuation Eats, Shoots and Leaves ).
Overall, The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes is an informative and entertaining site, and a useful resource if you are ever in any doubt about this punctuation mark. It's also a good example of how anyone can create their own attractive website on Squidoo without necessarily knowing anything about HTML. See my recent post about Squidoo for more information about this, including links to a couple of Squidoo sites (not as good as the one described in this post) that I've created myself!
I did write a while ago in this blog about a rule taught to me by my old English teacher Mr Sanders, which is great for checking where you should put the apostrophe in possessive expressions such as the children's ward and the boys' bedroom. However, I admit it doesn't cover every possible use of apostrophes.
So I was pleased to discover the other day a very useful Squidoo website (or lens, to use the Squidoo jargon) on this subject. It's called The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes, and it covers the correct use of apostrophes in (1) contractions, (2) possessive nouns, and (3) nested quotations (i.e. quotes within quotes). Personally I wouldn't really regard the latter as apostrophes - in my view they are single inverted commas or quotation marks - but I suppose they do look the same as apostrophes!
The site also discusses two common scenarios where apostrophes are NOT required but often get used incorrectly. These are plural nouns (e.g. potato's and banana's) and possessive pronouns such as its (which when used in the possessive sense does NOT take an apostrophe). Even experienced writers sometimes slip up here.
One thing I particularly like about The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes is the use of illustrations to support the points made. There are also some entertaining "What's wrong with this picture?" quizzes. These depict shop signs or menus where an apostrophe has been incorrectly used or omitted. You can check the answer by hovering your cursor over the photo or scrolling down to the foot of the page. Some of the mistakes are actually a bit hard to see, but that's just a problem with reproducing the photos and not really the site creator's fault.
There is also a gallery where you can submit your own photograph of incorrectly used apostrophes, and links to an interactive quiz about apostrophes on the website of Lynne Truss (the author of the best-selling guide to punctuation Eats, Shoots and Leaves ).
Overall, The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes is an informative and entertaining site, and a useful resource if you are ever in any doubt about this punctuation mark. It's also a good example of how anyone can create their own attractive website on Squidoo without necessarily knowing anything about HTML. See my recent post about Squidoo for more information about this, including links to a couple of Squidoo sites (not as good as the one described in this post) that I've created myself!
Nick at 1:13 PM
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