BlackHippyChick Day: Apostrophes

How do you comfort the grammar police?
They’re, their, there.

I didn’t write that joke, but I wish I had, and that’s enough. Today we’re doing apostrophes. (Yay)

Apostrophes have a few different roles:

• They denote ownership (as in “SpanishRed’s apostrophe lesson”)

• They show that numbers are missing (as in “The cupcake cult of ’23 was the best cult that ever existed.”)

• They denote ownership of plurals (as in “The cupcakes’ butter icing is clear evidence that they’re superior to doughnuts”)

• They demonstrate contractions (as in “they’re the best confection ever” as opposed to “they are.”)

This is easier than you think. The apostrophe goes where the missing letters would be. You’re. We’re. They’re. In You’re, the “a” in “you are” is missing, so that’s where the apostrophe belongs. Right at the missing letter.

The one thing apostrophes don’t do is help a plural along when there’s no ownership, so you do not say, “SpanishRed’s apostrophe lesson’s.” Nor do you say, “Red deserves some cupcake’s,” even though she definitely does. This applies to possessive pronouns, too, so you would not use an apostrophe when talking about theirs, mine, or ours. You also would not use an apostrophe to pluralise a number (as in, “Sometime in the Noughties cupcakes were declared sacrosanct”).

Apostrophes can get complicated sometimes. If your possessive is a plural, the apostrophe goes AFTER the “s”. It the possessive is singular, the apostrophe goes BEFORE the “s”. That means the ballerina’s shoes are pink, but the ballerinas’ shoes move the apostrophe to the right.

The Associated Press Style Guide makes it even more complicated, but since quite a few of you are interested in learning style guides, let’s explore it. In AP style, joint phrases only get an apostrophe for the SECOND noun. The first is left without. AP also adds a second “s” to denote ownership of a noun ending in “s”. In other words if scissors’s and pants’s apostrophes were written for AP, they would have an apostrophe between the two “s”s. Not all style guides suggest this. Some remove the second “s” entirely.

Thank you for coming to my apostrophe lesson. If you’re still confused, there, they’re, their.