[stylist] grammatical usage of apostrophes

[Robert Leslie Newman]

Lori

Thank you for the lesson on apostrophes. (I'm thinking that my last-minute
change to the text of my Valentine story may have sparked your interest in
posting this to/for us. Paranoid on my part you may ask --- some, but truly,
prior to sending my message off to STYLIST, I read back through my text of
TP130 and noted several changes that could be made to enhance the story line
and its technical aspects of grammar and/or sentence structure. And the only
change I did make was --- to add an apostrophe to "Hardys" --- thinking as I
did it --- mmm, why didn't I put an apostrophe  here the first time I and my
editor posted this thing? And even last night during and had this nagging
feeling that "Hardys" had been looked at and found to be okay minus the
apostrophe. 

So again, thanks for the lesson. It takes some reminding to get some rules
set in the rulebook of the mind.

(And yeah, I bet I'm not the only one around on STYLIST who is an apostrophe
freak! LOL) 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of loristay at aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 10:25 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] grammatical usage of apostrophes

This is a technical answer to a question no one has asked, but it's nagging
to be answered anyway.


Simple plurals do not take apostrophe s.  The apostrophe for the most part
indicates possession or the dropping of a letter.  For example, do not
becomes don't.  But if we are talking about a family, say, the Smiths, then
there is no apostrophe.  Mr. Smith, of the Boston Smiths ( S m i t h s),
will be visiting the New York area shortly.  


In some areas, the possessive is built into the word.  So for example, His
bed means the bed belongs to him, and no apostrophe is necessary.  The bed
is hers--now it belongs to her, but still takes no apostrophe.  The word
"its" (i t s) meaning something belongs to "it" such as -- the dog dropped
its ball--takes no apostrophe.  The apostrophe in the word "it's" (i t ' s)
means that the word is short for "it is."


(apologies ahead to dog lovers who object to the objectification of the
dog.) Yours grammatically, Lori
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