Once you're familiar with the basic uses
of apostrophes (namely to show possession
or contraction), you can move on to some
of the trickier cases. And we'll start
here with singular nouns that end in "s."
... As you
can see from the examples here, there is quite
a bit of variation, so the first one ends
in an "s" and an apostrophe, whereas the
other ones have an extra "s" after the
apostrophe. Why is that? Well, everything
has to do with how awkward it sounds to
say it. If you were to say "Moses's sailboat" ...
You can hear that sounds quite
awkward, whereas it's much easier to say
"Chris's nephew" or "the boss's car," even
though in the last case the boss already
has a whole bunch of "s's." The basic
idea, then, is [that] if it sounds awkward to say
it, [then] you can add just the apostrophe and
not the "s." But we will try to unpack that a
little bit in what follows to get at
some more specific rules that can guide
us. Now that we have a general approach
for dealing with singular nouns that
end in "s," we can apply some more specific rules
as well. So, first of all, our first two
examples are of classical names
... and we can add other
examples too. We could talk about Jesus or
Barnabas, and in these cases if we end
with the "s" then we can add just the
apostrophe. But these two examples also
show another rule, which is that if that
final sound ends in "us" or "eez," as in
"Herodotus" or "Socrates," then it also
qualifies for that kind of awkward sound,
where we add just the apostrophe and not
the apostrophe and the "s." Our next
example is of a phrase that ends in
"sake,"
so if you say for "goodness' sake," or for
"conscience' sake," normally you would not
say for "goodness's sake."
So again we can add just the apostrophe
and not the "s." The next example ...
is of nouns that are the
same in the singular and the plural.
In this case "series" is a noun that's the
same
whether it's one series or multiple
series. As a result we add just the
apostrophe and not the "s." You can
probably understand why. Already in the
plural if it ends in "s" we add just the
apostrophe, so it makes sense to kind of
make it the same for the singular
version. Then the last example here
is of organizations or place names that
end in "s." You are also allowed in this
case to add just the apostrophe and not
the "s." For the United States it makes
complete sense, because there are
multiple states, and even though the
singular noun is "United States," we sort
of are reminded of the number of
states here, and most people would not
say "the United States's veto," so listen
for it to try to figure out if it sounds
awkward or not and then try to apply
some of the specific rules as well. And
if you're going to publish a book or
have some other form of publication, you
may find specific rules or guidelines
that go with the publishing house or
with the website or newspaper (or
whatever you're working for). Try to
follow those, but they're going to
probably use some of these criteria that
we have talked about here as well, and
then whatever they use, try just to be
consistent in your approach. ...
Consistency is the key to a good sense
of style I think in this instance.
Another place where apostrophes are a
little bit tricky is with groups of
things, so in the first example here we
have what's called a compound noun,
and the apostrophe and
the "s" go at the very end. So
"sister-in-law's home." You don't have to
add an apostrophe earlier as well. ...
Another example
would be something like "somebody else's."
You would not say "somebody's else's." Just
add the apostrophe and the "s"at the very
end.
Same thing goes for what's called joint
possession (which in some cases may be a
criminal offense). Joint possession
... is where two people own something
in common, so the wedding here belongs to
Kate and it belongs to John. Presumably
they're getting married to each other
and they share the wedding in common.
In that case you add the apostrophe and
the "s" just at the very end. But it's also
possible that the two nouns in question
(the two subjects here) are owning
something separately. So let's say that
John and Kate have separate ideas for
their honeymoon plans ... So John
wants to go to Hawaii, and Kate does not,
let's say. In that case,
instead of "wedding" here we would put
"John and Kate's honeymoon plans" and we
would have to say "John's and Kate's"
because they have separate plans. So for
joint possession just double check if
the noun goes with both of them
collectively or if it goes with them
separately.
Let's look at one more instance where
the apostrophe causes some trouble and
this is with forming plurals. Normally
you're not allowed to form plurals with
the apostrophe. In fact this is sometimes
called the "grocer's apostrophe," and the reason for
that is that in supermarkets (grocery
stores) you may see plurals formed with
the apostrophe. You might want to buy
some bananas and the bananas are spelt
with an apostrophe [and] "s," which is of course
incorrect. But sometimes we are
allowed to break this rule that we
cannot form the plural with an
apostrophe, and I'll give you some
examples here. So with letters or numbers,
as you are pluralizing them ... so let's say
you you want to say "You should dot your
'i's' and cross your 't's'" ... then unless you
put the apostrophe in there it's going to
be really hard for people to see what
you're talking about.
Without the apostrophe it would just say "is"
and "ts." That would make no sense.
Same thing with "I count by 1's and
2's." You can also do this for decades.
So you could say "nineteen eighties" if
you wanted to, although with decades
often the apostrophe drops out and
that's becoming much more common. You
can also do it with certain words, so if
you're drawing attention to a word
(italicizing it as well), then you can say
for instance, "Canadians use a lot of 'eh's'
in their speech." And because you're
drawing attention to the word and you're
pluralizing it, you can add that apostrophe at
the end. So these are fairly rare
exceptions, and there's one more thing to
notice, which is that when you do this
sort of thing (when you're drawing
attention to a particular word letter or
number -- so all three of these cases [and]
ignoring the decades one here), you
should italicize the letter, number,
or word, but not the apostrophe and the "s." So that
that gets a little bit tricky. Just make
sure you add italics for everything
that's part of that except for the
apostrophe [and the] "s." And that's it for tricky
cases of apostrophe use. Hopefully you found this
useful. Try some of the exercises on the
website as well, and I think over time it
will get definitely a lot easier.