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January 20, 2007

My Pet Peeve

It seems more and more often these days I find myself looking at menus, signs, blogs, and advertisements in which people have misused apostrophes, and it really makes me crazy. I have been known to decide not to eat at a restaurant or buy from a business simply because their apostrophe ignorance has irritated the hell out of me. So here is a little lesson in proper use of apostrophes.

The most common misuse of the apostrophe is when people use it in plural nouns. For those of you who don't know what "plural nouns" are, they are multiple persons, places or things. Too many would write that as "person's, place's and thing's." Down the street from me is a place that sells "box's." I cringe every time I drive by. It's "boxes," dammit!

Okay, so here's how it goes. If you have more than one thing, you NEVER use an apostrophe. You just add an "s" or an "es" to the end (of course, there are exceptions, but generally this is the case). If you have more than one cat you have cats. If you get more than one kiss you get kisses. More than one house makes houses. More than one mouse makes mice. Oops. But you get the idea – no apostrophes!

Apostrophes are used to fill in spaces for missing letters (for example, "have not" becomes "haven't") or to show possession (if it belongs to Mary, it is Mary's). The cat that belongs to Jim is Jim's cat. If Jim has more than one cat, they are Jim's cats (not Jims cat's). The only common exception here is with pronouns – he, she, and it. If he owns something it's "his," not "he's." If she owns something, it's "hers," not "she's." And if it owns something, it is "its" not "it's." "It's" means "it is."

The most confusing use of apostrophes comes when you have multiple owners or the owners have a name that ends in "s." If you have one owner whose last name ends in "s" you would add an apostrophe and an "s" to show ownership. For example, the reindeer that belong to Santa Claus are Santa Claus's reindeer. For multiple owners, you want to make the word plural first and then deal with the apostrophe, which always goes after the "s." For example, if several cats share the same dish, it would be the cats' dish. If the reindeer belonged to both Santa and his wife, they would be the Clauses' reindeer.

I hope that clears this matter up for everyone out there. Maybe I can convince the Legislature to pass a law requiring this concept to be mastered before one can receive a high school diploma. Then I wouldn't have to be driving down the road and see a nice company truck going by with a logo on the side reading, "We mow lawn's."

Posted by Becky at January 20, 2007 12:28 PM