Why are we stumped by a little thing like the apostrophe?
You can’t read anything these days without seeing the abuse of the apostrophe. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if this little comma in suspension were to be eradicated altogether in a decade. But until that happens, let’s look at its proper usage:
1. The apostrophe indicates possessiveness.
Alan’s dog
If it is a plural noun, the apostrophe comes after the noun.
The parents’ complaint
2. The apostrophe is used to contract pronouns and their verbs to be/have, and negatives.
It is = it’s
They have = they’ve
Cannot = can’t
It therefore makes no sense to write “your” when you mean to say “you’re (you are) an idiot.” Can you tell the difference between “it’s” and “its”?
3. The apostrophe is never used to indicate the plural forms of acronyms/abbreviations.
CDs CD-ROMs
DVDs the 80s
It makes even less sense to write “Oreo’s” when you mean you can wolf down a bunch of these cookies.
Needless to say, if you think “she read’s” and “the cat lick’s itself” are grammatical English, you still haven’t got the point.
Why this common misuse of the apostropshe? I blame SMS, Facebook and sheer laziness.
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