It is the start of a new academic year, and I get the impression that the following information may be useful to some people. What follows is the text of an email I sent to my work colleagues some time ago.
"Oh no - he's off again!"
This email is not aimed at any particular individual, and if you already know what I am about to say, then I apologise. However, I can produce abundant evidence that many of you would benefit from reading this, no matter how irritating you may find it.
I want to draw your attention to a very old-fashioned subject - the use of the apostrophe in correct English.
The Basic Idea.
The apostrophe is often used in English to replace missing letters. Historically, this is why we also use it to indicate possession, because in Old English (which was a language before it became a brand of cheap cider consumed by homeless people and teenagers) "es" was added to the end of words to indicate possession. The apostrophe to show possession got started when people decided to miss out the letter "e".
Whenever you use an apostrophe, if it isn't to indicate possession and it doesn't stand for missing letters, then you have almost certainly put it in the wrong place. Apostrophes are like ambulance crews - they hate being called out when there isn't really anything for them to do.
Before we go any further.
Let's just get two things straight:
It's (with an apostrophe) always means either "it is" or “it has”.
Its (without an apostrophe) means "its", or "belonging to it".
The apostrophe to show possession.
Where we need to indicate possession, we can use an apostrophe. Instead of saying:
"the toy of the child"
we can say
"the child's toy".
This means that there is only one child, and that the toy belongs to the child. The apostrophe in this case goes BEFORE the letter s.
Another example would be:
"the plan of the manager"
written as
"the manager's plan".
Again, this means that there is one manager, and the plan belongs to the manager. However, if we write:
"the managers' plan"
with the apostrophe AFTER the s, it means that "managers" is plural, i.e. there is a plan that belongs to more than one manager.
As usual, in English, there are exceptions. Plural words which are formed other than by simply adding a letter "s" always take the apostrophe before the "s". Hence:
"the child's toy" (as before) but note:
"the children's toy".
The second phrase means that the toy belongs to more than one child. The apostrophe goes before the "s" because "children" is an irregular plural.
There is another exception, which is to make things easier to pronounce. There was a man called Keats, and he wrote poetry, hence:
"Keats's poetry" is correct because there was only one poet called Keats. However, "Keats's" is considered to be a bit difficult to say, and
"Keats' poetry" is also considered to be correct. It is up to the writer to decide in this case. I know that may sound like a lot of responsibility, but the English language is like that.