In fact, for some of these pronouns, adding an apostrophe forms a contraction instead of a possessive see the table above. Using possessive personal pronouns in joint constructions often sounds awkward You have their and my gratitude.
Usually, the best solution is to rephrase the sentence to avoid the joint construction You have our gratitude or You have their gratitude and mine. Using an unnecessary apostrophe to form the plural of a noun is a very common mistake. With very few exceptions, apostrophes do not make nouns plural. An apostrophe is part of the word it belongs to, so it should not be separated from the word by periods, commas, question marks, or any other punctuation mark. Apostrophes that fall at the very beginning of a contraction are often mistyped as left-hand single quotation marks.
Word processors tend to do this by default. So the apostrophe is still functioning, in a way, as a mark of elision, insofar as it is standing in for the missing e of a long-disused genitive case.
The simple answer, once again, is that there has never been any widespread agreement in terms of how we should use the apostrophe. One does not have to look very hard to find examples of apostrophes being manhandled and put into places where we today would consider them inappropriate.
Here are some now-discarded things that grammarians have said about how to use the apostrophe over the centuries:. The third person singular of certain Verbs, with the Nominative it set before it, is used Impersonally: as, It rain's, it snow's, it lighten's, it thunder's…. A number of institutions, such as Harrods department store and Barclays bank, have decided that the apostrophes that long were part of their names are no longer necessary. Furthermore, there is a sporting chance that any mistakes you make with it will one day come back into fashion.
Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. So just a quick review, helping verbs include:. This is for an entirely different grammar topic. But for now, just remember that we always use HAS for singular pronouns.
So example, you can say:. Helping verbs help a MAIN verb express an action. Most of the time, verbs can stand on their own, but sometimes they need help to express an action or a state. Other examples are:. Learn English. Cashier: This pie costs 17 dollars. Example: I have one dollar. She has a car. They have a brown horse. My uncle owns one boat and two cabins. Wrong: There are several trophy on the shelf.
Wrong: This town has many hot spring. Wrong: My city has many bridge. Examples: There are TOO many birds in the house. There are TOO many chili peppers in the pizza. There are TOO many boxes in the garage. Most would call them the "Hastings.
The plural of Hastings is Hastingses. The members of the Birch family are the Birches. Rule 2e. Never use an apostrophe to make a name plural.
Correct: The Wilsons are here. Correct: We visited the Sanchezes. Rule 3. If the compound noun e. Rule 4a. Note: As the above examples demonstrate, when one of the co-owners is written as a pronoun, use possessive adjectives my , your , her , our , their.
Avoid possessive pronouns mine , yours , hers , ours , theirs in such constructions. It should be mentioned that compound possessives are often clunky as well as confusing. Big difference. Such ambiguous sentences should just be rewritten. Rule 4b. In cases of separate rather than joint possession, use the possessive form for both. The homes belong to both of them.
Rule 5. Use an apostrophe with contractions. The apostrophe is placed where a letter or letters have been removed. Rule 6. There are various approaches to plurals for abbreviations, single letters, and numerals.
Many writers and editors prefer an apostrophe after single capitalized letters. See Rule 2b.
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