Apostrophe Quotes

I might not use capital letters. But I would definitely use an apostrophe…and probably a period. I’m a huge fan of punctuation.

The rule is: the word 'it's' (with apostrophe) stands for 'it is' or 'it has'. If the word does not stand for 'it is' or 'it has' then what you require is 'its'. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

Never underestimate the power of a well-placed apostrophe.

Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler.

For any true stickler, you see, the sight of the plural word “Book’s” with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated. First there is shock. Within seconds, shock gives way to disbelief, disbelief to pain, and pain to anger. Finally (and this is where the analogy breaks down), anger gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker.

They had just digested a recent meal of prepositions and were happily farting out apostrophes and ampersands; the air was heav'y with th'em&.

Those spineless types who talk about abolishing the apostrophe are missing the point.

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.

Once upon a time Somebody say to me (This is a dog talkin' now) What is your Conceptual Continuity? Well, I told him right then (Fido said) It should be easy to see The crux of the biscuit Is the Apostrophe(')

the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: “For every apostrophe omitted from an it’s, there is an extra one put into an its.” Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant,

one might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly), the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burnout from all the thankless effort.

Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been circulating lists of fumblerules for years. As owner of the world's largest collection, and with thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a bunch of these never-say-neverisms: * Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read. * Don't use no double negatives. * Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't. * Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed. * Do not put statements in the negative form. * Verbs has to agree with their subjects. * No sentence fragments. * Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. * Avoid commas, that are not necessary. * If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. * A writer must not shift your point of view. * Eschew dialect, irregardless. * And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. * Don't overuse exclamation marks!!! * Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. * Writers should always hyphenate between syllables and avoid un-necessary hyph-ens. * Write all adverbial forms correct. * Don't use contractions in formal writing. * Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. * It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms. * If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. * Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language. * Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors. * Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. * Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. * Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. * If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole. * Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. * Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. * Always pick on the correct idiom. * "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'" * The adverb always follows the verb. * Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives." (New York Times, November 4, 1979; later also published in book form)

You know where the name hell came from." He crossed his hands on his lap. "After I fell, I kept repeating to myself, God will forgive me. God will forgive me. Centuries of repeating this, I started to shorten it to He'll forgive me. Then finally to one word, He'll. He'll. "Somewhere along the way, I lost that apostrophe and now it's only Hell. But hidden in that one word is God will forgive me. God will forgive me. That is what is behind my door, you understand. A world of no apostrophes and, therefore, no hope.

It also bugs me when I hear about "Angelina's adopted son" or "Rosie's adopted children"--as if that word will always separate them instead of binding them together. Angelina's son and Rosie's kids and I sould get a regular apostrophe-plus-s like everybody else.

If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book. By all means congratulate yourself that you are not a pedant or even a stickler; that you are happily equipped to live in a world of plummeting punctuation standards; but just don't bother to go any further.

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur

In primary school, sports day was the one day of the year when the less academically gifted students could triumph...As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe

the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: “For every apostrophe omitted from an it’s, there is an extra one put into an its.” Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall.

I saw a sign for "Book's" with an apostrophe in it, and something deep inside me snapped; snapped with that melancholy sound you hear in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, like a far-off cable breaking in a mine-shaft.

I mean, full stops are quite important, aren't they? Yet by contrast to the versatile apostrophe, they are stolid little chaps, to say the least. In fact one might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly), the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burn-out from all the thankless effort.

As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.

Step back, I’m about to hit the CAPS LOCK key. DO NOT EVER ATTEMPT TO USE AN APOSTROPHE TO PLURALIZE A WORD. “NOT EVER” AS IN “NEVER.” You may reapproach.

...by tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self-publishing. Thus people who don't know their apostrophe from their elbow are positively invited to disseminate their writings to anyone on the planet stupid enough to double-click and scroll.

Ruth smiles, which rearranges the lines on her face. She inverts her parentheses and transforms commas into apostrophes. The pattern is that of a woman who has no regrets.

She re-marked her lips with her lipstick. I saw sprays of silver in her coarse hair. I saw inscriptions of her years around her mouth, a solid crease between her brows from a lifetime of cynicism. The posture of a woman who had stood in a casual spotlight in every room she'd ever been in, not for gloss or perfection, for self-possession. Everything she touched she added an apostrophe to.

Of all fuckin' days" "Okay, please don't say fuckin'." She shoots me a self-conscious glance. "I thought we liked cussing." "We love cussing. But we say the fucking g. I don't want to hear that apostrophe, Mom.

Sport is a mystery to me. In primary school, sports day was the one day of the year when the less academically gifted students could triumph, winning prizes for jumping fastest in a sack, or running from Point A to Point B more quickly than their classmates. How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.

Mr F.'s Aunt, who had eaten her pie with great solemnity, and who had been elaborating some grievous scheme of injury in her mind since her first assumption of that public position on the Marshal's steps, took the present opportunity of addressing the following Sibyllic apostrophe to the relict of her late nephew. 'Bring him for'ard, and I'll chuck him out o' winder!' Flora tried in vain to soothe the excellent woman by explaining that they were going home to dinner. Mr F.'s Aunt persisted in replying, 'Bring him for'ard and I'll chuck him out o' winder!' Having reiterated this demand an immense number of times, with a sustained glare of defiance at Little Dorrit, Mr F.'s Aunt folded her arms, and sat down in the corner of the pie-shop parlour; steadfastly refusing to budge until such time as 'he' should have been 'brought for'ard,' and the chucking portion of his destiny accomplished.

Take what the British call the "greengrocer's apostrophe," named for aberrant signs advertising cauliflower's or carrot's in local fruit and vegetable shops.

[Lydia tut-tutted on seeing the grocer's apostrophe]

A man who will misuse an apostrophe is capable of anything.” Con Houlihan

You're my apostrophe, you make me belong.

The Moms revealed that if you're not crazy then speaking to someone who isn't there is termed apostrophe and is valid art.

He was… a lost apostrophe in search of a word to which he might belong

And to read is to understand, to question, to know, to forget, to erase, to deface, to repeat--that is to say, the endless prosopopoeia by which the dead are made to have a face and a voice which tells the allegory of their demise and allows us to apostrophize them in our turn. No degree of knowledge can ever stop this madness, for it is the madness of words.

I'll take a drive to Beverly Hills Just before dawn An' knock the little jockeys Off the rich people's lawn An' before they get up I'll be gone, I'll be gone Before they get up I'll be knocking the jockeys off the lawn

In Beachcomber’s hilarious columns about the Apostropher Royal in The Express, a certain perversely comforting law is often reiterated: the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: “For every apostrophe omitted from an it’s, there is an extra one put into an its.” Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall.

In Beachcomber’s hilarious columns about the Apostropher Royal in The Express, a certain perversely comforting law is often reiterated: the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: 'For every apostrophe omitted from an it’s, there is an extra one put into an its.’ Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall.

The rule is: the word “it’s” (with apostrophe) stands for “it is” or “it has”. If the word does not stand for “it is” or “it has” then what you require is “its”. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, “Good food at it’s best”, you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

I suppose this is a trivial matter but I do want to object to the maddening fuss-fidget punctuation which one of your editors is attempting to impose on my story. I said it before but I'll say it again, that unless necessary for clarity of meaning I would prefer a minimum of goddamn commas, hyphens, apostrophes, quotation marks and fucking (most obscene of all punctuation marks) semi-colons. I've had to waste hours erasing that storm of flyshit on the typescript. [Regarding "The Monkey Wrench Gang"]

What was the apostrophe doing there? Did the doctor own the Meescham? And what was it with exclamation marks? Did people not know what they were for? Surprise, anger, joy—that's what exclamation marks were for. They had nothing to do with who resided where.

Well right about that time, people, A fur trapper Who was strictly from commercial (Strictly Commershil) Had the unmedicated audacity to jump up from behind my igyaloo (Peek-a-Boo Woo-ooo-ooo) And he started in to whippin' on my fav'rite baby seal With a lead-filled snow shoe . . .

From time to time, her dialogue will be rendered in ordinary English, which Louise does not speak. To do full justice to her speech would require a ladder of footnotes and glosses, a tic of apostrophes (aphaeresis, hyphaeresis, apocope), and a Louise-ese/English dictionary of phonetic spellings.

As we shall see, the tractable apostrophe has always done its proper jobs in our language with enthusiasm and elegance, but it has never been taken seriously enough; its talent for adaptability has been cruelly taken for granted; and now, in an age of supreme graphic frivolity, we pay the price.

This has to be the disease for you Now scientists call this disease Bromidrosis But us regular folks Who might wear tennis shoes Or an occasional python boot Know this exquisite little inconvenience By the name of: Stink Foot

Writing is, like gender or dominatricing, a kind of performance. But the craft of writing is primarily an art of making decisions. I often like to terrorize my students by insisting that every single notation—every piece of punctuation, every word, every paragraph break—in a piece of writing is a decision. You know when something is done, I tell them (they always want to know how to know when something is done), when you know the argument for every single choice, when not a single apostrophe has slipped by uninterrogated, when every word has been swapped for its synonym and then recovered. I don’t mean to take the fun out of creation, or even to impose my own laborious process on them, but I actually believe this. Not in the first draft, or even the fifth, but by the end, I want to have stripped as many tics and defaults, as many blind choices as is in my power. I want to be awake to all my choices.

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

This sally somewhat nettled Wilhelm; but he concealed his sentiments, remembering that Werner used to listen with composure to his apostrophes.

it s too great a blow underlined to a man apostrophe s pride to see a woman influence other women more than he can himself

As if silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.

Does he honestly think he’s still in charge?” Mashona wondered. “He thinks Human’s First has an apostrophe.

Everything she touched she added an apostrophe to.

There was an apostrophe-s back then, Tom's Lake, but time condenses experience.

Note that the apostrophe in fuck's sake is necessary because fuck in this instance is a noun; therefore the word fuck is a possessive noun that takes an apostrophe.

Meanwhile, there’s no counterbalancing evidence that correctly applied apostrophes keep comma numbers down, or that the grocer’s ones encourage pesky hyphens.

...curl into each other like apostrophes within a quotation mark as they talk. I realize that two years is not a long time.

The Moms revealed that if you’re not crazy then speaking to someone who isn’t there is termed apostrophe and is valid art.

The apostrophe in Can't was added by someone who did not believe in the power of Can.

Apostrophes, however, I love with all my heart. I support the correctly used apostrophe with that kind of fierce emotional investment in an irrelevance that most people reserve for football.

Once a hunter met a lion near the hungry critter's lair, and the way that lion mauled him was decidedly unfair; but the hunter never whimpered when the surgeons, with their thread, sewed up forty-seven gashes in his mutilated head; and he showed the scars in triumph, and they gave him pleasant fame, and he always blessed the lion that had camped upon his frame. Once that hunter, absent minded, sat upon a hill of ants, and about a million bit him, and you should have seen him dance! And he used up lots of language of a deep magenta tint, and apostrophized the insects in a style unfit to print. And it's thus with worldly troubles; when the big ones come along, we serenely go to meet them, feeling valiant, bold and strong, but the weary little worries with their poisoned stings and smarts, put the lid upon our courage, make us gray, and break our hearts.

In her new, albeit fragile, mood, this letter does not unduly distress her. One lesson she has learned is that any opinion expressed by a person who does not understand how to use an apostrophe may be disregarded with impunity.

Some of them had bits of cloth still on them, but most were nothing but whorls and spars of bone. They were a mess of bony apostrophes, commas, and exclamation marks brushed off some giant’s notebook into a tangled, ungrammatical heap.

when certain married words neglect to wear their apostrophes, they might be mistaken for their single friends: The identity of he’ll just went to hell. She’ll is like a shell of its former self. We’ll looks like it wishes it were a well.

Hypocritical, egotistical Don't wanna be the parenthetical, hypothetical Working onto something that I'm proud of, out of the box An epoxy to the world and the vision we've lost I'm an apostrophe I'm just a symbol to remind you that there's more to see I'm just a product of the system, a catastrophe And yet a masterpiece, and yet I'm half-diseased And when I am deceased At least I go down to the grave and die happily Leave the body and my soul to be a part of thee I do what it takes

In Beachcomber’s hilarious columns about the Apostropher Royal in The Express, a certain perversely comforting law is often reiterated: the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: "For every apostrophe omitted from an it’s, there is an extra one put into an its." Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall.

You know where the name hell came from.” He crossed his hands on his lap. “After I fell, I kept repeating to myself, God will forgive me. God will forgive me. Centuries of repeating this, I started to shorten it to He’ll forgive me. Then finally to one word, He’ll. He’ll. “Somewhere along the way, I lost that apostrophe and now it’s only Hell. But hidden in that one word is God will forgive me. God will forgive me. That is what is behind my door, you understand. A world of no apostrophes and, therefore, no hope.

For in his later books, if he had hit upon some great truth, or upon the name of an historic cathedral, he would break off his narrative, and in an invocation, an apostrophe, a long prayer, would give free rein to those exhalations which, in the earlier volumes, had been immanent in his prose, discernible only in a rippling of its surface, and perhaps even more delightful, more harmonious when they were thus veiled, when the reader could give no precise indication of where their murmuring began or where it died away.

Your diet shouldn’t have a name or be something you can tweet about using the # sign.  If you, in your chronic dieting ways must name it, it should be your first name, followed by an apostrophe s, and the word “Diet.”  So for example, what I eat is referred to as “Matt’s Diet.”  If your name is Jean Claude Van Damme, then what you eat is called “Jean Claude’s Diet,” and probably consists mostly of metal chards and King Cobra filets.  If your name is Shooter McGavin, then you probably eat pieces of shit like Happy Gilmore for breakfast.

Let’s start at the beginning, D’aron. Is it Daron or Daron or Daron? Daron, ma’am. What about this apostrophe? The name’s . . . Irish, he started to say before catching himself . . . The name’s misspelled. I never figured why it’s like that or how to git ’em to change it.

But in vain did he apostrophize the insect in this new language, born of sudden inspiration, as a cockroach's understanding is not equal to such a tirade: the insect continued on its journey to a corner of the room, with movements sanctified by an ageless ritual of the cockroach world.

We had a humiliating and lengthy wait at a DONT WALK sign with not a car in sight for miles. Dad was a press about jaywalking. Or maybe he just like to stare down what he'd testily called the "grammatical error sanctioned by the state." There is, of course, no apostrophe in the DONT WALK sign.

You are blazing to me. You are so blazing. No, you are better than blazing: you're blazin'. No G just an apostrophe. You don't need a G, cause i'm your G. So we dropped the G, and tonight you're gonna drop your G, String. Let me see that crack girl, I bet it aint whack girl. Love, your not so secret admirer-er

The deletion of an apostrophe and a single letter turned “Jane’s” into “Jane,” and the words “and her” were inserted immediately thereafter. Now the crown was to pass not to the male heirs of Jane Grey but to “the Lady Jane and her heirs masles.” (Edward was of course highly literate, but spelling was a kind of free-form creative art in the sixteenth century

We didn't, after all, sing "Another One Bites The Dust" as the coffin was carried out; Hazel and the vicar had settled instead on the more traditional "How Great Thou Art". And Aunty Rose's old adversary the mayor was pressed into service as a coffin bearer to replace Matt. Rose Adele Thornton, born in Bath, England, died in Waimanu, New Zealand, a mere fifty-three years later. Adept and compassionate nurse, fervent advocate of animal welfare, champion of correct diction and tireless crusader against the misuse of apostrophes. Experimental chef, peerless aunt, brave sufferer and true friend. She had the grace and courage to thoroughly enjoy a life which denied her everything she most wanted. The bravest woman I ever knew.

I have just had a thought about the cut of the Minerva's spanker-boom.' 'How little I understand of that sentence,' she said, admiring his drawing. 'And is there truly something on a ship called a f'c'sle? It seems to have an unwarranted excess of apostrophes. My suspicion is that when we landlubbers are not by, seamen do not use these words at all and talk quite normally.

We have now reached a level in which many people are not merely unacquainted with the fundamentals of punctuation, but don’t evidently realize that there are fundamentals. Many people—people who make posters for leading publishers, write captions for the BBC, compose letters and advertisements for important institutions—seem to think that capitalization and marks of punctuation are condiments that you sprinkle through any collection of words as if from a salt shaker. Here is a headline, exactly as presented, from a magazine ad for a private school in York: “Ranked by the daily Telegraph the top Northern Co-Educational day and Boarding School for Academic results.” All those capital letters are just random. Does anyone really think that the correct rendering of the newspaper is “the daily Telegraph”? Is it really possible to be that unobservant? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Not long ago, I received an e-mail from someone at the Department for Children, Schools and Families asking me to take part in a campaign to help raise appreciation for the quality of teaching in Great Britain. Here is the opening line of the message exactly as it was sent to me: “Hi Bill. Hope alls well. Here at the Department of Children Schools and Families…” In the space of one line, fourteen words, the author has made three elemental punctuation errors (two missing commas, one missing apostrophe; I am not telling you more than that) and gotten the name of her own department wrong—this from a person whose job is to promote education. In a similar spirit, I received a letter not long ago from a pediatric surgeon inviting me to speak at a conference. The writer used the word “children’s” twice in her invitation, spelling it two different ways and getting it wrong both times. This was a children’s specialist working in a children’s hospital. How long do you have to be exposed to a word, how central must it be to your working life, to notice how it is spelled?

Only the fool would take trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a’s, three b’s, four c’s, four d’s, forty-six e’s, sixteen f’s, four g’s, thirteen h’s, fifteen i’s, two k’s, nine l’s, four m’s, twenty-five n’s, twenty-four o’s, five p’s, sixteen r’s, forty-one s’s, thirty-seven t’s, ten u’s, eight v’s, eight w’s, four x’s, eleven y’s, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens and, last but not least, a single !” —Lee Sallows

all the time you hate you steal it from love, its sole provocation, for it does not precede the facts that call it forth; it nourishes itself on them. Dichromatism always extends to the complementary colors. You commit in one exactly everything you simultaneously omit in the other. They exist side by side to kill each other, like the heterosporous combination of cedar and chokecherry. What, after all, is the precise morphological distinction between an embrace and a strangulation? L’amour, la mort: every kiss muffles a bite. Inside every lover is manacled Taras Bulba. The anagram of ‘The heart’s desire’ is ‘hate strides here’—the imperfection in the transposition being the apostrophe you can’t cry out.

Les bêtes, cela parle; et Dupont de Nemours Les comprend, chants et cris, gaîté, colère, amours. C'est dans Perrault un fait, dans Homère un prodige; Phèdre prend leur parole au vol et la rédige; La Fontaine, dans l'herbe épaisse et le genêt Rôdait, guettant, rêvant, et les espionnait; Ésope, ce songeur bossu comme le Pinde, Les entendait en Grèce, et Pilpaï dans l'Inde; Les clairs étangs le soir offraient leurs noirs jargons A monsieur Florian, officier de dragons; Et l'âpre Ézéchiel, l'affreux prophète chauve, Homme fauve, écoutait parler la bête fauve. Les animaux naïfs dialoguent entr'eux. Et toujours, que ce soit le hibou ténébreux, L'ours qu'on entend gronder, l'âne qu'on entend braire, Ou l'oie apostrophant le dindon, son grand frère, Ou la guêpe insultant l'abeille sur l'Hybla, Leur bêtise à l'esprit de l'homme ressembla.

Erroneous plurals of nouns, as vallies or echos. Barbarous compound nouns, as viewpoint or upkeep. Want of correspondence in number between noun and verb where the two are widely separated or the construction involved. Ambiguous use of pronouns. Erroneous case of pronouns, as whom for who, and vice versa, or phrases like “between you and I,” or “Let we who are loyal, act promptly.” Erroneous use of shall and will, and of other auxiliary verbs. Use of intransitive for transitive verbs, as “he was graduated from college,” or vice versa, as “he ingratiated with the tyrant.” Use of nouns for verbs, as “he motored to Boston,” or “he voiced a protest.” Errors in moods and tenses of verbs, as “If I was he, I should do otherwise,” or “He said the earth was round.” The split infinitive, as “to calmly glide.” The erroneous perfect infinitive, as “Last week I expected to have met you.” False verb-forms, as “I pled with him.” Use of like for as, as “I strive to write like Pope wrote.” Misuse of prepositions, as “The gift was bestowed to an unworthy object,” or “The gold was divided between the five men.” The superfluous conjunction, as “I wish for you to do this.” Use of words in wrong senses, as “The book greatly intrigued me,” “Leave me take this,” “He was obsessed with the idea,” or “He is a meticulous writer.” Erroneous use of non-Anglicised foreign forms, as “a strange phenomena,” or “two stratas of clouds.” Use of false or unauthorized words, as burglarize or supremest. Errors of taste, including vulgarisms, pompousness, repetition, vagueness, ambiguousness, colloquialism, bathos, bombast, pleonasm, tautology, harshness, mixed metaphor, and every sort of rhetorical awkwardness. Errors of spelling and punctuation, and confusion of forms such as that which leads many to place an apostrophe in the possessive pronoun its. Of all blunders, there is hardly one which might not be avoided through diligent study of simple textbooks on grammar and rhetoric, intelligent perusal of the best authors, and care and forethought in composition. Almost no excuse exists for their persistent occurrence, since the sources of correction are so numerous and so available.

Without an apostrophe, she’ll is just a shell. And I am the turtle inside.

Late Friday morning I was driving toward Boulder. I was seated in "Doctor Lovebeads Cosmic Wonderbus and Mobile Mercantile." That entire phrase was painted in psychedelic colors on both sides of the van. But I left out the possessive apostrophe on "Lovebus[']" in order to show my contempt for bourgeois conformity.

The Apostrophe To grant possession to a singular noun, simply add an apostrophe and s: The student’s love of punctuation is boundless. If a plural noun that already ends in s needs to become possessive, slap a single apostrophe on the end of that word:

The students’ love of punctuation is boundless. To form the possessive of plural nouns that don’t end in s, add an apostrophe and s: The men’s love of punctuation is boundless. If two or more people possess the same thing, you need only put the apostrophe after the last one of the two mentioned: Len and Barry’s seminar teaches a love of punctuation. if two people own items individually, you must show your respect by giving them each an ’s: Len’s and Barry’s wives love punctuation. The possessive form of it is spelled its: The level of a civilization is measured by the precision of its punctuation.

We walked past a mailbox shaped like a cow and saw a hand-painted sign on the front door that read THE MORRISON’S—ESTABLISHED 1962. John and I had a long debate at the door about whether or not that apostrophe belonged there.

Jackson uses the silence to give me a bunch of stapled sheets. The title page says: Torture Survivors' Handbook. Information on Support and Resources for Torture Survivors in the UK. "This thing is mostly aimed at people coming here from abroad. But you should read it. And use it." I hold the book in my hands. I say, "They got the apostrophe in the right place. That's good.

On verge of going apostrophic, taking foxglove, myrrh, mare's milk cure, shedding articles, shredding conjunctions, but can't shake prepositions.

Experimenting later, in a coffee shop toilet, I discover that I have acquired a couple of raking-tools-cum-hairgrips. Also a tube of mascara: something called Glam'Eyes Lash Flirt, a product which would attract me more had it been less reckless with its apostrophe.

It’s making me suspicious of everyone. Everywhere I go I’m looking at people and wondering if it’s them. I hate it. I don’t want to be suspicious of people. I just want the whole thing to go away. To stop. At first I thought it was a few people ganging up on me, jumping on my feminism, as though being a feminist was the worst thing a woman could be. But after a while I realised that it wasn’t really about feminism at all. It was just one person with some sort of grudge against me. That person just kept on and on … and is still sending me letters now.” “We’ll find out who it is. I can look at the whole thing with fresh eyes.” “With a detective’s eyes, you mean?” “Is that so bad? We have to treat it like a police matter and look at all the possibilities. You’d be surprised at how many clues might be contained in as many letters as these. Physical clues, such as the paper and envelopes, the way the stamps are stuck on the envelopes, finger-prints and so on … and clues in the wording.” “There are some spelling and grammatical errors,” she sighed, almost in a gesture of defeat. “Exactly. Those errors can be clues.” “Just in this last letter, the writer has used dont without the apostrophe and your and you’re the wrong way round. They are mistakes that have been repeated again and again over the months. There are quite a lot of spelling mistakes in the earlier, longer letters. I’m not sure how much that will narrow it down, though. Loads of people don’t know when they’re supposed to use apostrophes, so they just guess. And loads of people can’t spell.” “It might help,” he nodded positively. “We should also look at who might have a motive for writing these letters. Is there anyone in your past you think could be responsible?” She shivered. “Like I told you, I’ve had months to think about it. I’ve wondered about practically everyone I’ve ever met and I hate thinking about people that way, especially people I know.” “I can be more objective and maybe I can come up

If someone points a gun at you and holds up a sign that says hand’s up, you shouldn’t worry about the apostrophe.

In 2004 a Nazi was someone who corrected grocers’ apostrophes or refused you service in their pop-up restaurant. (It hadn’t yet acquired another of its current definitions: someone you don’t agree with.)

Tonight in Crooked Path, we’ll all visit our dear ones’ graves and lay wreaths made of apostrophes: the symbol of something missing.

He was lanky, wiry as an apostrophe mark, and dressed in clothes that appeared to have come from a beggar’s bin.

Something there is in cyberspace that doesn't love an apostrophe.

all abot a little kid who can not whalk

It has sick on the sleeve. And no apostrophe.

She tucked an apostrophe of hair back from her eyes.

It takes only an apostrophe to make the word impossible possible according to the word itself

Possession is tricky. It brings up issues of jealousy, codependence, self-esteem, and incorrect apostrophe placement.