Wednesday, January 28, 2009

'Apostrophe'

I have always struggled with proper usage of the apostrophe. After a little bit of research I discovered it is not quite as difficult as I thought to properly place an apostrophe.

Some simple rules to remember are: (Thanks to WIKIPEDIA)
Singular nouns

For most singular nouns add the ending 's

Plural nouns

When the noun is a normal plural, with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive; so pens' caps (where there is more than one pen) is correct rather than pens's caps.

Compound Nouns

Compound nouns have their singular possessives formed with an apostrophe and an added s, in accordance with the rules given above: the Attorney-General's husband; this Minister for Justice's intervention; her father-in-law's new wife.

I think I will always be a little fuzzy on the use of apostrophes but Wikipedia really helped straighten a few things out.

5 comments:

  1. Man I love Wikipedia. It's so great to have a teacher that allows us to use it. I had a teacher for 1010 that barred the use of it. Great article! I love how you took the time to bold the headings and put information in a more easy to read format. Great job and keep it up!

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  2. As I read your post on apostrophes, I really appreciate the simplicity. I don't enjoy my post's in which I have tons of rules. When there are too many rules, it is too hard to remember. It is nice to have it simple. Good job summarizing the rules with examples.

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  3. Great job! :) I liked the fact that there was actually some good information on Wikipedia. This was a well thought out article that works well because of the simplicity.

    Thanks for sharing.

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