J-Tube is an English teacher.
J-Tube knows the difference between single and plural possessor apostrophes, but the kids in his English class do not. For example, one of them might look at a sentence like The wigs' problems and have no idea why the apostrophe is behind the s instead of in front of it. Each night, J-Tube flings himself on his bed and howls in frustration. He dreams about apostrophes that are crying out to be better understood and treated with dignity and respect, not just thrown in anywhere like so many mothballs on last year’s skinny jeans.
Last time we looked at It’s and Its. It was fun. We had some laughs. But it was only the innocent laughter of a group of fresh-faced school kids who don’t fully realise that they’re not just learning about the interesting early years of the ancient Roman Republic, they’re in for the whole fucking thing, all the way from the first expulsion of the ancient Etruscans to the final invasion of the Gauls that lead to the Dark Ages. And that is some serious timeline shit.
Anyway, now that we’ve dipped our toes in the apostrophe waters, it’s time to strip right off and plunge deeper into the grammar pool.
First up, let’s make ourselves a bowl of singular and plural possessor apostrophe cereal, eat it down and benefit from its high levels of riboflavin.
Let’s get there step by step.
Apostrophes indicate a possessive in a singular noun.
The boy’s hat.
When the possessor is a plural that does not end in an s (i.e Men, Children, Sheep) the apostrophe goes in front of the s.
The women’s movement
BUT
When the possessor does end in an end (i.e boys, wigs, tables), the apostrophe goes after the s
The babies’ bibs
So this is all fairly straight forward, but there is one final thing that you might have already noticed. What happens if you want to write something about, say, all the parents of all your friends? You can’t say ‘My friend’s parents’ because that just looks like you are referring to a single set of parents, so you have to say
My friends’ parents
An easy way to work this out is, ask yourself if something makes sense if the apostrophe is in front of the s. If you can see that it looks like you’re only referring to a singular thing, when you want to refer to many things, and you’re not lucky enough to have scored a plural word that DOESN'T end in s, then help yourself to an apostrophe AFTER the s.
This all might seem more information than you ever wanted to know – you might feel that you were happy in wading in your ignorance, and now that you’ve found out that you’ve been doing it wrong all along, you know that not only will you continue to do it wrong, but you’ll feel ashamed about it too.
Let me take this opportunity to remind you that MC Grammar loves you, and doesn’t want you to feel ashamed, just because you didn’t have a teacher like J-Tube around to fight for you and your grammar-hungry soul. And the truth of the matter is that we now have just six uses of the apostrophe left, and all of them are less used or less confusing than the ones we’ve already looked at. As far as I'm concerned, the score is almost settled against bad grammar. Justice has been served out here, and let me assure you, it tastes of your favourite ice-cream.
J-Tube knows the difference between single and plural possessor apostrophes, but the kids in his English class do not. For example, one of them might look at a sentence like The wigs' problems and have no idea why the apostrophe is behind the s instead of in front of it. Each night, J-Tube flings himself on his bed and howls in frustration. He dreams about apostrophes that are crying out to be better understood and treated with dignity and respect, not just thrown in anywhere like so many mothballs on last year’s skinny jeans.
Last time we looked at It’s and Its. It was fun. We had some laughs. But it was only the innocent laughter of a group of fresh-faced school kids who don’t fully realise that they’re not just learning about the interesting early years of the ancient Roman Republic, they’re in for the whole fucking thing, all the way from the first expulsion of the ancient Etruscans to the final invasion of the Gauls that lead to the Dark Ages. And that is some serious timeline shit.
Anyway, now that we’ve dipped our toes in the apostrophe waters, it’s time to strip right off and plunge deeper into the grammar pool.
First up, let’s make ourselves a bowl of singular and plural possessor apostrophe cereal, eat it down and benefit from its high levels of riboflavin.
Let’s get there step by step.
Apostrophes indicate a possessive in a singular noun.
The boy’s hat.
When the possessor is a plural that does not end in an s (i.e Men, Children, Sheep) the apostrophe goes in front of the s.
The women’s movement
BUT
When the possessor does end in an end (i.e boys, wigs, tables), the apostrophe goes after the s
The babies’ bibs
So this is all fairly straight forward, but there is one final thing that you might have already noticed. What happens if you want to write something about, say, all the parents of all your friends? You can’t say ‘My friend’s parents’ because that just looks like you are referring to a single set of parents, so you have to say
My friends’ parents
An easy way to work this out is, ask yourself if something makes sense if the apostrophe is in front of the s. If you can see that it looks like you’re only referring to a singular thing, when you want to refer to many things, and you’re not lucky enough to have scored a plural word that DOESN'T end in s, then help yourself to an apostrophe AFTER the s.
This all might seem more information than you ever wanted to know – you might feel that you were happy in wading in your ignorance, and now that you’ve found out that you’ve been doing it wrong all along, you know that not only will you continue to do it wrong, but you’ll feel ashamed about it too.
Let me take this opportunity to remind you that MC Grammar loves you, and doesn’t want you to feel ashamed, just because you didn’t have a teacher like J-Tube around to fight for you and your grammar-hungry soul. And the truth of the matter is that we now have just six uses of the apostrophe left, and all of them are less used or less confusing than the ones we’ve already looked at. As far as I'm concerned, the score is almost settled against bad grammar. Justice has been served out here, and let me assure you, it tastes of your favourite ice-cream.
Oh MC Grammar, I'm normally pretty good with possessive apostrophes (I had a rad teach like J-Tube). But one I've always had trouble with: is it each other's or each others'?
ReplyDeleteBecause 'each' is singular (indicating one person), the apostrophe goes in front of the s, so it should look like this:
ReplyDeleteEach other's (i.e pocketwatch)
You wouldn't put an apostrophe only if you just wanted to say that there are a lot of other people around, in which case you would say:
there are a lot of others here.
Pretty cool, hey?