The Apostrophe Protection Society was started in 2001 by John Richards, now its Chairman, with the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language.
Richards’ simple rules for apostrophes led me to The Dreaded Apostrophe, a site that simplifies the apostrophe even further, boiling the rules to one:
[snip]
I am also going to simplify matters, and having studied linguistics I know this may be oversimplification for some. But here the aim is to explain the dreaded apostrophe, not teach linguistics and old or middle English. So bear with me.English is a Germanic language. It shares much in common with modern German, although much vocabulary was later imported from French/Latin. Quick example: the German for foot is Fuss, for ball is Ball, so football is Fussball. We get the word pedestrian from the French/Latin side though. Some Germanic usage survives in English, particularly in North American English where some archaic forms remain in use - gotten for instance. The -en participle ending will be familiar to German speakers.
Like modern German, old forms of English used a genitive case ending to show possession. This is normally -es. For our purposes, that will do. For example, the English The man's coat in German is Der Mantel des Mannes (The coat of the man). Note the -es ending on Mann to show possession.
So now let's (let us) go back a few hundred years in English….[big snip-out]The old -es possessive form in English is now missing, and as I am sure you will now remember we
use an apostrophe when letters are missing.
Got it?
Another alert reader did it for me this time, pointing out the ambiguity of the recent Concord Monitor headline, Men more likely to be dating violence victims.
“Did this mean that men were more likely than women to be dating the victims of violence, or that men were more likely than formerly to be dating the victims of violence?” wrote Rufford Harrison of Concord.
“Neither, it turned out. Men were more likely to be the victims of dating violence,” writes Harrison.
The context demands a hyphen between dating and violence to clear up the ambiguity.
Harrison concludes, “The hyphen is possibly the most underused and most needed punctuation mark in the English language.”
Hear, hear!
Someone asked recently about when to punctuate with square brackets (aka box brackets).
Use square brackets […] to indicate that you’ve inserted insert text of your own into a quotation, usually to clarify the meaning or replace original text. For example:
Elliot wrote, “I wonder if [Eckstrom and Phillips] knew about the latest report before they issued the warning.”
In this case, “Eckstrom and Phillips” might replace the word “they,” in a quotation in which the original author would have introduced Eckstrom and Phillips in a previous paragraph.“[W]e are potentially looking at more communication and navigation disruptions, more satellite failures, possible disruption of electric grids and blackouts, more dangerous conditions for astronauts—all these things,” Behnke said during the briefing.
Here, I’ve cut words from the beginning of Behnke’s quotation and added an uppercase W to indicate that I’ve begun a new sentence by clipping a section from the full text.
Use brackets to close off parenthetical material already within parentheses. For example: (We discuss this second control group [n = 30] in section IV, pp 35-70).
You might also set off numerical expressions in box brackets to make them easier to understand.
It goes without saying that brackets, like parentheses, always appear in pairs. What opens must close.
For the ultimate explanation of the many types and uses of brackets in prose, mathematics, computing, sports, etc., see this Wikipedia entry.
Note: Always refer to and follow the official style guide of a professional journal or magazine when preparing an article for publication. Look to your department's style requirements when writing academic papers.
Face-to-face communication provides rich physical context that benefits both speakers and listeners: Speakers can use, and listeners take in, subtle changes in tone, inflection, register, speed and volume; meaningful pauses, changes in breathing; and body language: rolling the eyes, smiling, frowning, grinning, clenching teeth, gesturing, changes in posture, pounding the table. Speakers can tune in and respond immediately to listeners’ body language. Most of us find it easy to read shades of boredom, confusion, frustration, excitement, wonder, understanding, etc. in our listeners’ body language.
We lose nearly all that physical expression in written communications. The abstractions of words and punctuation and their arrangement on the page seem lifeless by comparison.
As one form of compensation, many writers use exclamation points merely for emphasis, especially to express strong emotion: You’ll find the flowers as astonishing us as the snakes and parrots! Dr. Winifred Allen offered a fabulous lecture on social Darwinism!
In a rush of feelings, writers sometimes lay down two or three exclamation points to increase the emotional emphasis: The talk was great!!!
Text peppered with the enthusiasm of exclamation points feels breathy and childlike. To develop emotional context in your writing: Choose strong, meaningful words, especially concrete nouns and verbs that convey action. Vary the length and structure of sentences and paragraphs. Encourage readers to engage with your ideas by asking open-ended questions and introducing ideas that hint at the unexplored aspects of your topic. Explore rhetorical devices such as irony, metaphor, analogy. and physical imagery.
Save the exclamation point for true exclamations: Grandma, what big teeth you have! Run for your life! Yikes!
Note: Most style guides encourage writers to avoid exclamation points in formal and academic text.
Last week, Andrea asked when to use a colon, when a semicolon. Good question! You'll find the "rules" for these two punctuation marks much more fluid than, say, for the period, the exclamation point, or quotation marks. In brief:
The colon creates a sentence “break” nearly as complete as a period. It announces something to come. Use it:
A semicolon separates two closely related elements in a sentence. I’ve heard it referred to as a “muscular comma.”
Use a semicolon:
[Awful truth: When you use a coordinating conjunction— and, but, for, or, nor, so, or yet—to introduce an independent clause, you use a comma rather than a semicolon: Andrea has a long commute, but she arrives early and eats breakfast at work.]
That little black stroke called the apostrophe causes no end of difficulty for writers. People put it in when they shouldn’t: Used Car’s for Sale. Tomatoe’s $1.29 lb. Dr. Hunt lecture's in college classroom’s nationwide.
But people also leave it out when they need one: Help build your childrens esteem. Sell your produce at a farmers market. Selma served on a citizens panel.
English requires an apostrophe to indicate omitted letters in contractions: They’ve gone to Bermuda. I’ll get to it tomorrow.
The apostrophe indicates ownership or belonging: The child’s mother. The river’s edge. For plural nouns, the apostrophe typically follows the s: Veterans’ Home, farmers’ market. For proper nouns ending in s Jones, most style guides call for adding an apostrophe s: the Jones’s house.
Of course, much of the confusion arises because we add es or s to most words to make plurals, and people confuse those plurals with possessives taking an apostrophe s or s apostrophe.
The apostrophe made international news last month—at a land grant university, no less—when the nonprofit University Gateway Corporation, the group developing a $4.5 million walkway at the University of Minnesota, voted 4-1 to name it Scholars Walk, rather than Scholar’s or Scholars’ Walk.
As reported by the Associated Press:
[Gateway Corporation chair Larry] Laukka argued to board members of. that an apostrophe would add distinction by suggesting it is owned by those it honors. That argument didn't work. The board voted 4-1 against the punctuation mark.The board worried that the apostrophe would make the four-block walkway appear exclusive at a time the university wants to be inclusive. It might even mean adding apostrophes to Regents Professors Square and a Professors Lane.
“Apostrophes would be out of control!" said board member Margaret Carlson.”
Readers who want to learn more about the apostrophe or join a rising movement of punctuation activists could turn to the Apostrophe Protection Society, founded in 2001 by retired British journalist John Richards with the rallying cry, “The little apostrophe deserves our protection. It is indeed a threatened species!”
A smidgen of punctuation can make a big difference in meaning.
This hilarious headline: Squad helps dog bite victim makes sense if you add a hyphen: Squad helps dog-bite victim.
Use hyphens to improve clarity when you use two or more words in sequence to modify a noun: motorcycle-crash survivor, three-year-old sibling, small-business owners, bare-armed performer .
For more information about when to use a hyphen, visit this page at Purdue's online writing lab.