Two superpowers of the apostrophe
The humble apostrophe is actually a superpower in the punctuation world. Few know it – in fact, I hesitate to say that most of us readers and speakers take him for granted. But without this superhero of our language we’d have to speak a lot more and read the long way.
The two powers of this King Fu kicking flick of the pen include mooshing two different things into one new creation. And transferring ownership to anyone at any time. Imaging that. Walking down the road wishing for this or that. Out pops the apostrophe and with a mere call on his sidekick (an “s”) – it’s yours.
- Superpower one: contraction
As mentioned above, the fist gift is making two into one. In English we use the apostrophe of contraction all the time: “Won’t you pass the salt?” “I’d like to take you out!” “I’d’ve invited you if I’d known you like Batman!”
The rule is that you simple insert the apostrophe into the new word to replace the letters left out in the shortening. The trick here is to remember that the apps doesn’t join the word, he’s more like a joker – he takes the space of the deleted letter(s).
2. Superpower two: possession
The second use of the apostrophe is to indicate ownership. Eg. The dog belonging to the neighbor becomes it’s the neighbor’s dog. The new owner (the noun) simply takes on a new suffix to his name, the double barrelled apostrophe “s”. The simple rule is when you add “’s” it’s now yours. Cool hey! The only complication is when the noun already ends in an “s”. This happens often in English plurals. In this case simply add an apostrophe. Done.
