Apostrophe

The apostrophe is used in many languages. Its chief purpose is to indicate a missing letter. So, for example, in French, "l'armoire" means "the wardrobe", and is composed of "armoire" preceded by "la", which drops the "a" before another vowel: the apostrophe is there to acknowledge this.

Use in English

In English the apostrophe behaves not unlike a letter: it has three pronunciations, (í, schwa, and a glottal stop) and, also like some letters, it is frequently silent. Not surprisingly, then, it tends to be misused. On blogs, no matter what the general standard of literacy, one can see apostrophes wrongly inserted in plurals ("plural's") and many examples of ít's where there should be íts. (The accents show stress and pronunciation, see English phonemes.)Throughout the world there exist notices in which the writer shows off his or her supposed familiarity with English by inserting an apostrophe into an ordinary plural, as for example: LOT’S OF BARGAIN’S! which should read simply: LOTS OF BARGAINS! And that includes English-speaking countries: Lynne Truss calls them "greengrocers' apostrophes". Conversely, apostrophes are often omitted, especially among capitals and in titles, presumably for aesthetic reasons: THE RAKES PROGRESS (The Râke's Prôgress), CHAMPIONS LEAGUE (Chámpions' Lêague - or perhaps Chámpions is here an adjective), BITCHES BREW (Bítches' Breŵ: singular would be Bítch’s Breŵ – Miles Davis presumably did not intend a statement about the brewing habits of bitches). It is hard not to sympathise with the periodic calls for the apostrophes abolition (and, as exemplified in this sentence, omitting it reads easily enough).

The apostrophe is often pronounced like í in ís (though all these are schwa in Australasian English): in possessive nouns after -s, -x, -z, -ce, -se, -ch, and -sh: Jônes’s càr, Méndez’s hòuse, Rêese’s dóg, wítch’s breŵ, Bùsh’s pólicy (all -zíz), Bíx’s bánquet, the fóx’s tâil, Grêece’s nèighbours (all -síz).

And also in the contraction of ís after -s, -x, -z, -ce, -se, -ch, -sh: the fóx’s íll sounds like the fóx ís íll - though the former is almost as likely to have the schwa sound.

To further the complication, some writers prefer Jônes’ càr &c. but two s’s are heard (if not it’d be Jôan’s càr).

In róck’n’rôll, R'n'B, B'n'B, and similar combinations with an abbreviated 'and', the first apostrophe is schwa and the second silent. And the schwa sound begins -n’t (the contraction of nót): coùldn’t, dídn’t, hádn’t, ŏughtn’t, shoùldn’t, mústn’t, hásn’t - though the apostrophe, signalling the omitted ó of nót, must come after the n.

But where -n’t follows a vowel sound, there is no new syllable: dãren’t, wëren’t, cān’t, shān’t (all monosyllables).

As it is also when it substitutes for the í in ís, and in the possessives, provided that the preceding letter is not -s, -x, -z, -ce, or -se: Pêter’s boòk. Pêter’s íll. The dóg’s ángry. The gòvernment’s crâzy.

The apostrophe is silent also in the very common contractions hê’s, Î’m, wê’re, thèy’d, yoû’ve, shê’ll, ít’s etc.

And it’s here, with ít’s, that we come to the most common apostrophe mistake of all, as found in "It wagged it’s tail". The correct version is apostropheless like the other possessives mŷ, òur, yŏur, hís (*hízz) and hër: The dóg wágged íts tâil. It’s a perfectly logical mistake, as noun possessives do have the apostrophe: Pêter shoòk Jâne’s hánd, and so does the pronoun òne’s: Ít géts ón òne’s (*wúnz) nërves. Computer spellcheckers cannot as yet detect and correct this error; but it remains that ít’s is only allowed for the contraction of ít ís.

The full declension of a noun ending in –y

	singular	plural
normal	pàrty	pàrties
possessive	pàrty’s	pàrties’

pàrties = pàrty’s = pàrties’ - they are identically pronounced.

In the gïrls’ boòks the possessive plural apostrophe is silent and final, after the plural s of gïrls. Similarly: thê Émirates’ låws, hër bâbies’ náppies, the hŏrses’ mânes.

whose possessive = who’s contraction: these are both *hoôz and so are commonly confused:

Whose boòk ís ít? I’m trŷing to fînd òut who’s tâken ít (who hás).

Who’s còming? (Who ís?)

The përson whose mistâke ít ís ís nót ûsually the përson who’s môst bóthered by ít. The òne whose idêas are bést and who´s bést at presénting them ísn’t necessãrily the òne who´s gót the môst to gâin.

The apostrophe occurs initially in the archaic ’tís and ’tẁas (for ít ís and ít ẁas) and to indicate dropped 'h': ’Ê tôld mê ’ê’d bŏught an ’ŏrse for Hê tôld mê hê’d bŏught a hŏrse.

Another silent apostrophe appears in the plural of initials and letters of the alphabet: CD’s (*sêedêez) A lánguage fùll of z’s. A similar usage with numbers, as in the 1980’s, is rather pedantic as it suggests we might confuse letters and numbers: 1980s is taking its place, and it looks much better.

Ô and a silent apostrophe begin many Irish surnames: O´Súllivan, O’Cónnor, O’Dónnell, O’Lêary, O’Toôle, O’Nêill, O’Reîlly, O’Gŏrman. There is no space after the apostrophe. (These spellings are English: the Irish language itself omits the apostrophe and spells many of the names wildly differently.) In thrêe o’clóck, however, the first o is a schwa.

The apostrophe can also occur in words from Arabic and Hebrew, between vowels, where it is more in theory than in practice a glottal stop, such as Bà’ath party (= bàth water), in the name of the newspaper Ha’arétz, and in Qur’àn, which has largely relaced the traditional Koràn. But what is the point in putting an apostrophe in Al Qa’ìda if you are going to pronounce it Al Qaîda?

And Hallowêen is best left without an apostrophe between the e’s.

But apostrophes are useful for shortening words in captions: gòv’t for gòvernment.

Shape - and inverted commas

The apostrophe, in fonts where it is not vertical, always bends like a reversed c. Its opposite, the mark which bends in the same direction as a c, can only be used as an opening inverted comma, while the closing inverted comma looks exactly like an apostrophe; there can be no confusion, however, because the inverted comma, being a true punctuation mark, can never be followed immediately by a letter. Inverted commas (which also tend to be used superfluously around notices) can be single (‘…’) or double (“…”) and are used to open (‘) or close (’) direct speech: “Examinâtions”, replîed Óscar, “are quéstions àsked bŷ the foôlish, whích the wîse cánnot ànswer”.