The Confusion Surrounding the Apostrophe and the Letter 'S' (On possession and plurals and contractions)
Apostrophe is not just a Frank Zappa Album
I hope to make this a very short post. It’s one of those “get it off your (my) chest” things. You see, getting the usage of apostrophes and the letter ‘S’ is difficult and confusing.
Actually, it doesn’t seem so to me, but it obviously is, as is evident from the fact that so many people are challenged by their correct usage.
So I will make it as clear as I can as concisely as I can, with first a few statements of fact, followed by some examples.
In English, the letter ‘S’ is sometimes used to show that something is plural.
Example:
Elephant (singular)
Elephants (plural)
When the ‘S’ is used in this way (to denote more than one of a thing, such as an elephant), an apostrophe would be inappropriate.
For example, if I were to write: "elephant’s” it would not refer to two or more pachyderms, but rather it would indicate that an elephant possessed something. But what? If the word is left hanging like that, the reader doesn’t know. “The elephant’s what?” would be a sensible question for her to ask, flummoxed.
An acceptable use of “elephant’s” (with an apostrophe, showing possession) could be, for example: “The elephant’s trunk is long.” The elephant has (possesses) a trunk, and it is long.
Another valid use of an apostrophe is when a word is a contraction of multiple (usually just two) other words. That is, it’s (it is) multiple words contracted into one (or “two words jammed together”). An example of that is:
“The Elephant isn’t going to be happy that you stole all her peanuts.”
Here the word “isn’t”—which, as you can see, contains an apostrophe—is the collapsed form of the two words “is not.” The two words (“is” and “not”) have been crammed together, and the “o” has been removed and replaced with the apostrophe, indicating that something (the “o”) is missing.
As Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style says, “Contractions are why God invented the apostrophe.”
So an apostrophe can be either used to show possession (“the elephant’s peanut”) or to indicate part of the word has been left out (“the elephant wasn’t happy”).
Note: Sometimes multiple parts of a word are elided (left out), necessitating the use of multiple apostrophes. Sometimes this is done to indicate common pronunciation of the word, such as the word “and” in the phrase “Rock and Roll.” A common way of spelling it is “Rock ‘n’ Roll” as that is how it sounds when spoken (both the ‘a’ and the ‘d’ in the word “and” are typically left silent, so that, if you didn't know better, you would think the person was saying "Rockin' Roll").
Finally, sometimes plural and possessive occur in the same word. In that case, the apostrophe appears at the end. So if multiple elephants own something, the “s” is added to the end of the word to indicate plurality, and then the possessive apostrophe is appended to that, as in “The elephants’ peanuts were stolen. The burglarized pachyderms were not amused.” If it were just one pachyderm’s peanuts that were stolen, it would be: “The elephant’s peanuts were stolen.”
So you wouldn’t write about something a group of elephants possessed in this way:
The elephants’s peanuts were painted blue by a tagger.
(adding the plural ‘S’ AND the possessive ‘S’)
However, the one seeming exception to this, where “s’s” is used, is when a person’s name ends in ‘s’, such as Dickens:
Dickens’s books include A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and Bleak House.
Here are a few examples:
The elephant is angry. (one elephant is mad)
The elephants are angry. (two or more elephants are upset)
The elephant’s trunk is long. (the elephant in question has a trunk, and it is long)
The elephants’ trunks are long. (the elephants in question have trunks, and they are long).
Samuel Clemens’s books include The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
But: Mark Twain’s books include “ ”
The elephants would’ve gladly gone back to Africa. (the apostrophe indicates the words “would” and “have” are combined, and the “ha” part of the word “have” has been left out).
On a side, but related, note: People often misspell “would have” (and similar constructs) as “would of,” which is not only wrong but also illogical. How does that make sense? “I would of done it” makes no sense at all, whereas “I would have done it” does.