It's Happening: Stopping Apostrophe Abuse
By Julie Perine on June 01, 2014 from It’s Happening
Learning is a lifelong process. Daily, I look for new knowledge and welcome attainment of new skills. Just this weekend, I learned to operate a cash register and shoot a 12-gauge shotgun. It’s cool that people have become passionate about and interested in different things - and that they’re able to share those interests with others.
With that being said, I’d like to offer a little guidance to anyone interested in a brush-up session on a little something I’ve taken close notice of in most of my life: Proper forms of possessive and plural words.
Yes, for a few minutes, I’d like to talk a little about the constant misuse of the 
apostrophe. It’s a little mark of punctuation with a big name – and two-fold responsibility: (1) It indicates ownership and (2) It connects letters to form contractions - like isn’t, you're and it’s – short for “is not,” “you are” and “it is,” respectively. That’s where it gets tricky, because when referring to “It” as possessive, the correct word is “its.” Hey, I didn’t write the rules, I’m just sharing them.
apostrophe. It’s a little mark of punctuation with a big name – and two-fold responsibility: (1) It indicates ownership and (2) It connects letters to form contractions - like isn’t, you're and it’s – short for “is not,” “you are” and “it is,” respectively. That’s where it gets tricky, because when referring to “It” as possessive, the correct word is “its.” Hey, I didn’t write the rules, I’m just sharing them.
Where the apostrophe does not have a place is in a plural that is not possessive. The faux pas usually occurs when the singular ends in “y.” Instead of dropping the “y” and adding “ies,” sometimes the wayward apostrophe gets thrown in the mix. Contrary to fairly popular belief, more than one secretary is secretaries – not secretary’s.
But what if it happens to be a day to honor secretaries? In that case, the day belongs to the secretaries so where, oh where, does the apostrophe go? I would certainly say it would be Secretaries’ Day – belonging to many secretaries and not just one, as Secretary’s Day would indicate.
Now, let’s pretend a secretary by the name of Mary Miller wants to display a sign at her home, indicating that her family lives there. Ask three different people and you’ll likely get three different answers.
1. The Millers
2. The Miller’s
3. The Millers’
So, what do you think? Well, in this case I believe it could be door no. 1 or door no. 3. I would chose the former because the sign is to state the name of the family, not necessarily a statement that the family owns the home. If, however, that is the case, than door no. 3 would be acceptable. But I still like no. 1 better.
I could go on and on, but I guess you get the point. I hope this small blog has done its small part to put an end to apostrophe misuse, a cause for which I possess quite an interest.
Julie Perine can be reached at 304-848-7200, julie@connect-bridgeport.com or follow @JuliePerine on Twitter!
More "It's Happening" HERE.
Leave a Comment
Log in or create an account to post a comment.