Dreyer's English - Benjamin Dreyer 2022
Apostrophes
56 assorted things to do (and not to do) with punctuation
The stuff in the front
18.
Before we get to what you do use apostrophes for, let’s recount what you don’t use them for.
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.”
Directing their disapproval toward miswritten produce signs advertising “banana’s” and “potato’s” (or “potatoe’s” or even “potato’es”), the Brits have dubbed such incorrectly wielded squiggles “greengrocer’s apostrophes.” In America, where we don’t have greengrocers, we should call them something else. The term I was first taught was “idiot apostrophe,” but that’s not really nice, is it.
Let’s simply call them errant apostrophes. Which is kind of classy, don’t you think?
19.
The pluralization of abbreviations, too, requires no apostrophes. More than one IM = IMs. More than one ID = IDs. More than one ATM = ATMs. Etc.
20.
To say nothing of dos and don’ts, yeses and nos, etc.*7
21.
There’s no such word as “their’s.” Or “your’s.” We’ll cover their/there/they’re and your/you’re later. Twice. Because the differences are crucial for anyone who wants to look even remotely educated.
22.
Here comes a major “on the other hand,” though: Do use an apostrophe to pluralize a letter.
Mind your p’s and q’s.
Dot your i’s and cross your t’s.
You bring home on your report card four B’s and two C’s.*8
23.
I’ll wager you’re adept at the use of apostrophes for simple possessives:
the dog’s toy
Beyoncé’s umpteenth Grammy
As to common—that is, not proper—nouns ending with an s, you don’t, at least not in recently published text, encounter the likes of
the boss’ office
the princess’ tiara
which I find positively spooky-looking, and so for most of us,
the boss’s office
the princess’s tiara
is the no-brainer way to go.
Trouble knocks at the door, though, when terminal s’s occur at the ends of proper nouns. When the talk turns to, say, the writer of Great Expectations, how do we style his ownership?
Well, I can certainly tell you how I style it:
Charles Dickens’s novels
Though you may come across a lot of discussion elsewhere about adding or not adding that s after the apostrophe based on pronunciation, convention, or what day of the week it is, you’ll save yourself a lot of time by not thinking about these s’s and just applying them.
24.
The Possessivization of Martin Luther King, Jr.
—
Imagine if you will this headline:
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.,’S SPEECH MAKES HISTORY
Let me say this about that:
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
As a younger, more forward-thinking person, you may already render the names of photocopied offspring without commas, thus:
Martin Luther King Jr.
In which case you’ve got it easy:
Martin Luther King Jr. was a hero of the civil rights movement.
and thus:
Martin Luther King Jr.’s gift for oratory
Old-school construction, though, sets off a “Jr.”*9 with commas, as in:
Martin Luther King, Jr., was a masterful orator.
When possessivizing such a person, your options are
· that horror noted above, which I’ll refrain from repeating
· Martin Luther King, Jr.’s gift (which is admittedly a little unbalanced)
· Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, gift (better balanced, and at least not eye-stabbingly ugly)
You choose.*10
25.
Let’s move on to plural proper noun possessives, over which many tears have been shed, particularly around Christmas-card time.
First we have to properly construct the plurals themselves. So then:
Harry S. and Bess Truman = the Trumans
John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy = the Kennedys*11
Barack H. and Michelle Obama = the Obamas
And, lurching backward to the birth of our republic:
John and Abigail Adams = the Adamses
The pluralization of s-ending proper nouns seems to trip up a lot of people, but John and Abigail are the Adamses, as are John Quincy and Louisa, as are Rutherford B. and Lucy the Hayeses, and that seems to be that for s-ending presidents, but you get the point.
People who are perfectly content to keep up with the Joneses—and I’ll wager the Joneses are good and tired of receiving Christmas cards addressed to “the Jones’s”—sometimes balk at the sight of the Adamses, the Hayeses, the Reynoldses, the Dickenses, and the rest, but balk all you like, that’s how the game is played.*12
As to the possessives, then, a relative piece of cake:
the Trumans’ singing daughter
the Adamses’ celebrated correspondence
the Dickenses’ train wreck of a marriage
26.
If Jeanette has some pencils and Nelson has some pencils and Jeanette and Nelson are not sharing their pencils, those pencils are:
Jeanette’s and Nelson’s pencils
If Jeanette and Nelson co-own some pencils, they are:
Jeanette and Nelson’s pencils.
27.
Q. Is it “farmer’s market” or “farmers’ market” or “farmers market”?
A. I’m presuming there’s more than one farmer, so out goes “farmer’s market.”
As to the other two, is it a market belonging to farmers or a market made up of farmers?
I say the latter, so:
farmers market*13
28.
Though it has its champions, the style decision to skip a title’s The in a possessive construction, as in:
Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games
will always make me wrinkle my nose, and it can lead to such eyebrow raisers as
Jeanne Birdsall’s Penderwicks
which looks to me like either a mild expletive or an obscure variation of Pick-Up Sticks.