Apostrophe

It’s time. I’ve been waiting for the right moment. The right moment being one in which some person, having recently broken this rule in my presence, won’t know that I’m writing this blog post about them, pointing directly at them, holding them up to ridicule in front of our vast readership. I’ve needed to wait until it had been at least a week since one of my correspondents made the error.

It took a long, long time. This rule gets broken all the time. Smart, literate, articulate people make this very common error. And it makes me cringe. I’m really sorry to tell you this. I’d like it so much better if I didn’t care quite so much. I’d love to be able to just let it go; after all, it’s not as if it were a big, important issue that really, really matters. It’s not as if it had any bearing on world peace or climate change or the elimination of poverty. It’s really quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Measured by almost any measure one can imagine, it’s very small. One would think that its impact on me ought not to be so very great. Judged by its size, this is indeed a tiny indiscretion, miniscule. I realize that the problem is entirely my own. My discomfort is way overblown in the face of its actual occupation of space, physical or emotional. And yet it’s there!

The rule, dear friends, is this: an apostrophe has two uses. It shows possession (with nouns: Jacob’s ladder, Victoria’s secret) or it denotes missing letters (contractions: don’t scream, I’ve had enough). Possession is never denoted by an apostrophe for any pronoun. Most English speakers/writers don’t have a problem with this except with the tiny little word it! But the rule works there too.

So, whenever I mean to shorten up “it is” I use an apostrophe and I get “it’s” which, being interpreted means “it is.” If I want to indicate possession, something belonging to or attributed to “it” I must remember that “it” is a pronoun and never, never use an apostrophe, but just write it plain, simply “its.”

You can check to see if I’ve followed my own rule by going back over this posting (if you’re still reading; I realize this is deadly dull except to other grammarians). Whenever you see an apostrophe, check the accuracy by inserting the missing letter and reading “it is.” Otherwise there should not be an apostrophe there.

There, I’ve got it out of my system. People will still get it wrong, and I’ll still cringe, but at least I’ve told you. Have a nice day. And bless you for loving me anyway.

Posted by Marion