Apostrophe Catastrophe (Part One)

When I was in second grade, I lost a spelling bee because I misspelled the word “its.” I put an apostrophe in when I shouldn't have, and it was a traumatic moment in my young life. But I think this lesson is burned into my mind precisely because of my past misdeeds, and although I can't change my past, I feel the next best thing would be to save all of you from similar apostrophe-induced horrors.

What Is the Purpose of an Apostrophe?

Apostrophes have two main uses in the English language: They stand in for something that's missing, and they can be used to make a word possessive.

Apostrophes first showed up in the 1500s as a way to indicate omissions. Today, the most common place to find this kind of apostrophe is in contractions such as “can’t" (for “cannot”), “that’s" (for “that is”), and “it’s" (for “it is” or “it has”), but they can also be used in fun ways. 

If you're writing fiction, you might use apostrophes to eliminate letters to represent a character's dialect; for example, “I saw 'em talkin' yonder,” with apostrophes to indicate that the speaker said “‘em” instead of “them” and “talkin’” instead of “talking.” Sometimes people call this “eye dialect” because it’s dialect that your eye can see on the page. Most people who give fiction writing advice say it’s fine to occasionally use eye dialect, but you should do so sparingly because it can be hard to read and distracting, and it’s also easy to get it wrong.

In the 1600s and again in the 1700s, new uses emerged for the apostrophe, so it’s no wonder that people were and are confused (1), and it wasn't until the mid-1800s that people even tried to set down firm rules for the apostrophe (2).

Apostrophes Indicate Possession

One major new use for the apostrophe was to indicate possession. For example, “the aardvark's pencil,” where there is an “apostrophe-S” at the end of “aardvark.” That means the pencil belongs to the aardvark. He is in possession of it. It is not a contraction of “aardvark” and “is....

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