Book Of Spelling Rules

by G. Terry Page

256 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 1995

Reviews

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

In an era where we use so much tech to write and so much of that tech corrects us, such a guide as this seems as quaint as the cover of my edition, which uses "Portrait Of Mrs Hearne And Her Grand-niece Fanny Sowman" by Frederick Daniel Hardy, a 19th Century painter of domestic and small-town life.

I like the categorizations and approach here of bringing in word source (language) to understanding the confusing and contradictory spelling ways of our language. So much is about exceptions that I find the occasional universal comforting:

When not to use an apostrophe

Possessive pronouns never take an apostrophe. 'It's' can only mean 'it is'; this apostrophe can never be used to indicate possession or the genitive case with 'it'. Thus you cannot write 'it's weight' when you mean 'the weight of it'; the correct spelling is 'its weight'.

Similarly, apostrophes should not be used with other pronouns like his, hers, ours, yours, theirs.