Little Sins (Misplaced Apostrophes)

Writing errors in fiction can be minor irritants (in my former career in a pharmacy dispensary, they could be dangerous). If you fluff a few apostrophes or confuse the occasional word your reader’s engagement will be the victim. Make too many errors, and your story fails. You owe it to your story to look out for these little sins and keep your message clear.

Sin 3: A scattering of apostrophes

The collective noun for a gathering of apostrophes must be a scattering. When I’m faced with a block of text belonging to someone with an itchy apostrophe key it looks like they have scattered a bag of the things into the wind and let them hit the page as they may.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Apostrophes have only three uses, and one of those is rare. Fix these three rules in your head, and never inflict a greengrocer’s apostrophe on your work again.

An apostrophe indicates possession

After singular nouns or indefinite pronouns (such as anyone) ‘s indicates possession:

It was Malcolm’s job to herd the cats.

It is anyone’s guess how he got them all in the car.

‘s is also used to form a possessive with a plural noun that does not end in an s:

            It is the children’s fault that they got muddy first.

An apostrophe alone is used after plural nouns ending in s:

            And now the cats’ footprints are all over the car seats.

But for a singular proper noun ending in an s sound, the possessive is formed with ‘s:

                Rufus’s prints are all over the steering wheel too!

An apostrophe is used to form a contraction

When two words are slammed together to form a contraction, an apostrophe indicates where letters have been pushed out of the new word.

‘Can’t’ is a contraction of ‘cannot’ and ‘wouldn’t’ is a contraction of ‘would not’, for instance.

Contractions are inappropriate in most formal writing but are the norm in dialogue. Few people enunciate the full versions of commonly contracted words. Use only for very posh people or annoyed tennis players:

                ‘You cannot be serious!’

Two common Apostrophe mistakes to avoid

One of the most common confusions I see when proofreading concerns ‘it’s’.

The correct possessive form is ‘its’:

            The book has lost its cover. (Probably because a cat savaged it).

The only correct usage of ‘it’s’ is as a contraction of ‘it is’.

            It’s a cat stampede!

Confession time: I’m paranoid about ‘it’s’ because it is one of my blind spots. I give every instance of ‘its’ and ‘it’s’ an extra-hard stare.

The other common confusion is between ‘your’ (a possessive pronoun):

            Is this your cat?

And ‘you’re’ (the contraction of ‘you are’):

                You’re going to have to replace the book your cat destroyed.

Plurals and Apostrophes

An apostrophe is used to denote a plural in a few cases. This is mainly with letters, numbers, or symbols. The most famous example is:

            Mind your p’s and q’s.

The apostrophe is there for clarity. Most readers will stall over the sentence:

                Mind your ps and qs.

Conclusioning Little Sins (Misplaced Apostrophes)

These are the basic rules for using apostrophes and they cover most cases. There are some complications involving classical names, the names of well-established businesses that have decided to style their name without the possessive apostrophe (Barclays Bank, for example) or instances where added a ‘s makes a possessive difficult to pronounce. That’s the time to reach for a copy of New Hart’s Rules or your grammar manual of choice.