Apostrophes

Welcome back.

Let’s keep this crash course going.

Today we’re going to talk all about apostrophe’s.

Let’s begin by talking about the uses.

There are three main uses of an apostrophe.

We use apostrophes for Mission possession.

And for some plurals.

So let’s talk about each of these in detail.

First omission we use omission or an apostrophe to show the omission of letters.

The most common use of this form of omission is in contractions.

So instead of it is used it’s it apostrophe s instead of they are used there instead of u r we use your.

We also use an apostrophe to omit letters when we’re writing in as some type of speech dialect.

You’ll see this in lots of fiction writing.

So instead of coming we would say come in or set of good old we a good all right so not rocket science

by any means.

Use apostrophes to omit certain letters when we’re contrasting words or when writing in a dialect.

The most common use of apostrophe is to show possession so to show possession for most singular and

plural nouns that do not end with an s.

We add an apostrophe and an S.

For example the women’s room.

Women apostrophe s.

The man’s favorite car.

This is Mike’s crash course on college writing.

OK so simple possession of singular and plural noun set to not already.

And unless we add an apostrophe and then an s.

So what about when we have joint possession.

So if something belongs to more than one person we add an apostrophe s only after the last person’s

name for example that is Bert and Ernie is favorite food.

Notice that the apostrophe s comes after Erny the second name and not after both of them.

However if these two if Bert and Ernie own separate but similar objects and they are listed together

then we do place an S after each name.

So those are burts and Ernie’s favorite colors.

So each has a different favorite color so we would use perts and Ernie’s.

OK so you use an apostrophe s on both names if they are owning separate but similar objects.

Here’s where a lot of the confusion comes in when nouns are already enden.

So we do add an apostrophe s after singular nouns that end in s for example that is my boss’s car.

So boss already ends in s but it is singular.

So we do an apostrophe s.

This is Mr. Ross’s class.

However we add an apostrophe after the final s of plurals ending in s.

So we don’t add an extra s if the plural is already ending in s we just add an apostrophe.

Those are my two daughters skirts so the plural daughters already ends in s.

So just add the apostrophe.

Are these toys the kids from day care so kids are ready as s it is a plural.

So we only add the apostrophe.

Let’s look at common places where students love to place apostrophes but they are wrong.

So the first one is to make plurals of words letters and symbols used as nouns.

So incorrect.

Twos and Threes with an apostrophe correct would be twos and threes without an apostrophe.

Another one.

Do’s and don’ts with apostrophes.

The correct form is do’s and don’ts without apostrophes before.

Yes.

Another one is to create plurals out of capital letters and abbreviations without internal punctuation.

So my transcript shows for is three B’s and to seize the correct way to write that is without apostrophe’s

my transcript shows for A’s three B’s and two c’s and for abbreviations without internal punctuation

we also do not use an apostrophe.

So I earned two Ph.

Ph.D.s from Harvard.

Correct would be I earned two Ph.D.s without the apostrophe from Harvard.

We do the same thing for a time period.

Lots of us like to put an apostrophe when we’re showing a time period but that is false.

We need to we don’t need or we shouldn’t use apostrophes with time periods so incorrect would be the

1960 apostrophe s correct as to 1960s in the past we also never use an apostrophe to create possessive

nouns possessive pronouns.

Sorry we do for nouns not for pronouns.

So incorrect would be yours.

Pasta Yes and the correct as yours without an apostrophe.

And finally we didn’t we never use apostrophes to pluralize normal or regular nouns.

So there are a lot of kids in the park.

Of course the correct form of that is simply without the apostrophe.

OK so send me any questions you have about apostrophes.

But my main tip is not to make it more difficult than it actually is.

So the only things apostasies actually do are to show omission of letters within a word or to show possession.

But still if you’re struggling with this if you noticed you’re you’re unsure of when to use an apostrophe

please shoot me an email and we’ll chat about it.

All right thanks.