Apostrophes

Apostrophes are very easy to use, they have only two functions. One is when a letter is omitted (don't, you're, can't) and the other is to show possession ( the boy's dog, one boy, the boys' dogs, more than one boy).
Simple plurals just need an 's' or in the case of some words borrowed from French, an 'x' ( gateaux). Not an apostrophe in sight.

Ah yes but what about its....it breaks the rotten rules. I hate apostrophes lol

So I'll carry on killing puppies almost everytime I write lol.

I can see why 'its' causes confusion, because you would expect it to need an apostrophe to show 'belonging to it', but in fact it is treated as the neutral form of the possessive adjective i.e. his, hers, its.

vampirequeen It doesn't break the rules. It's – meaning it is – has an apostrophe because the second i has been omitted. Its, the possessive – as in its meaning – doesn't have an apostrophe any more than my, your, his, her, our or their have apostrophes.

Careful absent - if we keep posting the same replies, it will fuel the conspiracy theory.

It's JessM's turn now.

I have to admit that when I write its I do stop and think for a moment. The fact that hers does not have an apostrophe is a helpful way of remembering it.
My current wince, and it is the season to be wincing, because the so and sos are all ** "gifting" instead of "giving". AAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!
Amazon etc are to blame methinks.

There's a thread about the rise of 'gifting' further down...

Apostrophes are my blind spot

vampirequeen It isn't true. The puppies are all okay.

Ah well, we all know how evil and shocking amazon is [sarc emoticon]

The rule with apostrophes is "If in doubt, leave it out" The trend now is to use fewer of them, so you will just look trendy. If you put one in just to be on the safe side, you have a 50/50 chance of being wrong.

There is some disagreement about the use of apostrophes in situations like "DVDs" - which is clearly a plural, but several letters have been missed out, so an apostrophe might be justifed on those grounds. Different editors do different things.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease let's not go down the apostrophe road again!! And as for all those poor puppies

(Should that have read puppy's?)

gracesmum its made me

I always thought that "journey" should have the "y" taken away and replaced with "ies" to make the plural but my computer doesn't like "journies" (in fact it doesn't look right now!)

Donkey = donkies

Computer doesn't like this one either, now I'm more confused

Def not "donkies" or "journies" So no journies to Bethlehem on donkies
Now, regarding apostrophes - could Gransnet HQ please tell me how to post that lovely English Teachers' Party Game cartoon they had on Facebook? Or please, pretty please, could you do it for me? It sums up the whole thing perfectly.

What about The Monkees? Was that wrong as well?

They were very wrong. in every way.

I've only just this second realised [this is looking at the word Monkees] that The Beatles were/was [or whatever] a reference to 'beat' [at least I assume they were]. That's taken me nearly fifity years to work out. I always wondered why they had such an awful name. I'm so slow on the uptake sometimes....

I was one of those people who thought the name would never catch on!

Words ending in vowel + y just add an s. Words ending in consonant plus y change y to ies. Monkey , monkeys. Duty, duties.

Gracesmum's post just reminded me about the other thing apostrophes are used for.

Mike's bike.
Susan's bike.
Lewis' bike why not Lewis's bike. It would still sound out properly to read.

I hate apostrophes.