Language & Grammar discussion
Grammar Central
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Apostrophe! Again.
Found this at my local Salvation Army Thrift Store: We no longer accept TV's or computers.
Well, I have always felt that the apostrophe, in the case of words like "TV's" and "Photo's", while looking wrong, are actually right, as they are contractions of the original words: Televisions and Photographs.What do others think?
I always get confused as to when I should use apostrophes.
Mod
I think you're wrong.
Mod
Possessives that are not pronouns. John's apple. His apple. The phone has lost its charge.
Contractions, in place of the missing letter. Don't forget. It's here. But not in acronyms like TV, or in words that are merely shortened like photo.
My sisters are fine women. Apostrophe needed where?My sisters children drive me crazy. Apostrophe needed where?
Carol wrote: "My sisters are fine women. Apostrophe needed where? Nowhere - sisters plural only.My sisters children drive me crazy. Apostrophe needed where?" Sisters' children - plural sisters and possessive apostrophe after the s.
My sister's children would be single and possessive with the apostrophe before the s.
Gabi wrote: "My sister's children would be single and possessive with the apostrophe before the s."Unless you have more than one sister and are referring to the offspring of both/all.
My sister's children drive me crazy = one sister, so the possessive apostrophe goes after singular "sister".
My sisters' children drive me crazy = two or more sisters, so the possessive apostrophe goes after the plural "sisters".
The gist of it is that apostrophes are used in two circumstances:
* Missing letters: can't (can not), it's (it is)
* Possession, where the apostrophe and s go after whoever owns the thing (Mary's book)
They are not used for possessive pronouns (his house (but Peter's house)).
The trouble with its/it's is that you DO need an apostrophe when it's a contraction, but not in other cases (the cat shed its fur).
The only contentious area is initialisms: nowadays most people write PC, TV, NASA, BBC etc without, though some still prefer P.C.
That's a much better explanationthan mine! I will say that its/it's still confuses me! I can't keep it in my head which one gets the "tick" and why!
Mod
Its is a possessive pronoun. No apostrophe. Just like hers or his.
It's is a contraction of it is. Apostrophe instead of the missing letter.
Simple as that.
I don't get confused about contractions, just singular and plurals. Now I hope I can remember it. Thanks everyone.
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I wouldn't do well with the singing or praying part, though. And I'd want a single, damn it.
In Belgium, I once had a black beer made by Trappists. It was so strong that, after the second bottle, I could scarcely speak, let alone use the apostrophe correctly.
Somebody should send this whole discussion to Fanny Burney. I'm reading her books for the first time and she used its and it's interchangibly, (okay, so I can't spell!) as though she just picked them out of a hat. She wrote, "Its a nice day" and "It's a terrible day" or else, "Its leg fell off" and "It's foot fell off." (Okay, so I'm not good at coming up with examples.)I remember when I was editing a little literary magazine and a woman who had majored in English sent a poem in which, while she meant to say its, had written its'. Later, after rejecting the poem for other reasons, I saw it published in another literary magazine edited by university professors and, if I'm not mistaken, former English majors, and there it was: its'!
I mentioned this to one of my Italian students of English here in Italy and he was shocked! It's a monstrousity! he cried.
Not to cause any undue apostrophe trouble, but no one has mentioned a much maligned use, as a noun, when in direct address of an absent or imaginary person or of a personified abstraction. Imagine, dear Horatio, if you had said, "And, in this upshot, purpose's mistook, Fall'n on the inventors heads: all this can I truly deliver." The spoken apostrophe is moot.
Rosabeatrice wrote: "Somebody should send this whole discussion to Fanny Burney...She wrote, "Its a nice day" and "It's a terrible day" or else, "Its leg fell off" and "It's foot fell off.""Bear in mind that in her day, the conventions were different! If you read Jane Austen in the original format, see possessive pronouns like "her's" WITH an apostrophe, and that was the norm then. Compound and hyphenated words were different as well.
There's no excuse for inconsistency within a single book, though.
I'm glad you pointed that out, Cecily. I was losing faith. Yes, I'm seen her's and your's in Burney's books. In fact, I didn't realize how much Jane Austen's books had been "cleaned up" and modernized until I read Fanny Burney.
The TVs vs TV's controversy is big. Both ways are accepted, but I favor TVs for plurals because it differentiates between these: "TV's fate is yet to be determined"
and "TV's getting better and better"
and "TVs for sale."
In March 2013, it became illegal in Devon (the English county) to use apostrophes in street signs. This has apparently been informal policy for some time, but it is now official. It is to "avoid confusion". Various protests were made, but I think the policy still stands. No doubt the protests are tempered by the fact that the number of Devon place names that could bear an apostrophe is very few.
Anthony D wrote: "In March 2013, it became illegal in Devon (the English county) to use apostrophes in street signs..."Not "illegal"! No laws were passed. LOL.
However, like many local councils, Devon decided not to use apostrophes in new street names, and possibly to drop them in existing ones. Cambridge was recently in the news for the same reason, and there have been others before that.
There is a huge amount of inconsistency across the country about which street and place names have apostrophes and which don't, and it predates computers. However, there are data issues when technology is involved, and it's not just down to the data source itself (such as NLPG), which is sometimes blamed. It also depends on what software or apps are searching the data. The good ones ignore the presence or absence of apostrophes when searching for matches. However, there are ones that DO match against apostrophes and don't have a fuzzy matching ability, so with them, there is a real chance that an address won't be found, which, in the case of emergency vehicles, could be crucial.
Of course, the answer is to buy a decent address searching system, rather than to drop the apostrophes.
The apostrophe has been left out of US placenames since the late nineteenth century, at the federal level at least. Martha's Vineyard is a rare exception.
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Cecily wrote: "Anthony D wrote: "In March 2013, it became illegal in Devon (the English county) to use apostrophes in street signs..."Not "illegal"! No laws were passed. LOL.
However, like many local councils,..."
The powers that be in Cambridge, England, recently also announced that the apostrophe would not, in future, be used in Cambridge's street signs. Being a university city, and filled with academics, you might imagine the furore that statement caused. 'They' were forced to re-think their policy, and all has been restored. That's not to say though that there are already a few mistaken apostrophes - both in, and out..
Oh and a happy Valentine's day. (Presume there is an apostrophe here?)
Gabi wrote: "Well, I have always felt that the apostrophe, in the case of words like "TV's" and "Photo's", while looking wrong, are actually right, as they are contractions of the original words: Televisions an..."Never use apostrophes for plurals (the apostrophe for abbreviations has now been replaced by simple -s, as has for decades..., unless you want to sound a bit old fashioned).
As to the Saxon Genitive (possessive 's)...
Yes for singulars.
Tom's car
Exception, when the 's is between two s letters (for goodness' sake) in which case you only use the apostrophe.
Use it for names (St. James's Park, Tess's husband...) and for surnames of an individual (Dickens's novels).
Use it when the words 'shop' 'surgery' etc have been omitted (the doctor's, 5he chemist's).
Plurals:
For plurals ending in -s, only use the apostrophe (the cars' fault).
For other plurals, use 's (the children's toys).
Compound singulars
Tom and Sue's car ( the car belongs to both of them)
Jake's and Fred's cars (we are talking about two cars, one belonging to Jake, one to Fred).
Ade
Ade, it's interesting to me that you have put a full-stop after St. We were taught that one must never use a full stop after an abbreviation unless the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last letter of the word e.g. etc. I'm now wondering whether the form you have used is also now accepted in the UK as so many constructions are. This, of course, is inevitable as we have an ever-evolving language.
Mod
'even' NE?! What. Are. You. Implying ?.
Newengland wrote: "The Brits don't even dot their Dr. or Mr. or Mrs. words."Actually some of us do!
Ah it may have changed since my day, Rob, in the olden days ...
Mod
Ah, but not in Ireland! Nooooooooooooo..........
Just my thoughts as a former sign designer:Look at it from the sign designers' viewpoint. They have no knowledge of whether or not the intended mark can read or has any sophisticated education at all. He has limited space and size type. Characters cost money. The purpose of the sign is a dominating factor especially in situations of rapid recognition importance. Failure of these design considerations and compliance can maim, kill or result in unintended losses.
In sales, the inclusion of a comma or apostrophe can influence sales, right or wrong withstanding.
In law, the unintended consequences can be enormous.
Because the reader is the end user, they are usually the determiner of the academic result, not the writer. The writer is the facilitator and must know the proper practice to affect the interpreter in the desired way.
Adriano wrote: "Gabi wrote: "Well, I have always felt that the apostrophe, in the case of words like "TV's" and "Photo's", while looking wrong, are actually right, as they are contractions of the original words: T..."Ah, what if the word you are apostrophizing ends with an s: for example, Marcus. Should it be Marcus' or Marcus's? I've seen both.
Mod
They should not have an apostrophe. The words are not true contractions, but sort of a shorthand. I'm sure there's a term for that, but I can't think of it.
I used 3 true contractions in that last sentence (I'm, there's, can't) and you can see that they are words sort of run together with letters left out. THAT'S where you need the apostrophe.
TVs.
As for photos, it's just a short way of saying photograph. If you really thought the apostrophe should replace missing letters there you would need 5 of them! :)
Photos is the plural. I have lots of photos.
Photo's would be the possessive. This photo's border is torn.
Or photo's could be a contraction of "photo is" and in that case would take an apostrophe. This photo's out of focus.
I often have a poem line starting with a word that has missing first letter(s). Can anybody tell me it yhe first letter after the apostrophe should be capitalized? Examples:'til I see you, I will be blue. (until - Two apostrophes?)
'Cause you cared, you did not lie. (because)
'specially blue were her eyes. (especially)
'e can do what 'e wants t'.
'ave a go at it, pal.
????
Melinda wrote: "The TVs vs TV's controversy is big. Both ways are accepted, but I favor TVs for plurals because it differentiates between these: "TV's fate is yet to be determined"
and "TV's getting better and ..."
I think this is an interesting case which may illustrate how the rules of grammar / orthography are in flux and always developing.
The apostrophe is a marker for the genitive, and hence "TV's are getting better" is simply wrong. My guess is that some may dislike putting the "s" right after "TV", because they somehow do not yet regard an abbreviation as a proper noun.
Hence, the apostrophe, I guess, in these cases is not meant to act as a genitive marker. People use it as a means to distance themselves from a spelling perceived as odd. The abbreviation "TV" just is not regarded as a proper noun equal to, say, "snob".
Hence, "TVs" is regarded as weird, while "snobs" is not. And that is amusing, because "snob" is also an abbreviation, but as it dates from the 16th Century, there was sufficient time for people to accept it as a proper noun. Hence nobody feels the need to express discomfort with the expression by offsetting the plural-"s" with an apostrophe. "Snob's" can only ever refer to the snob in the genitive.
I agree with you, Mark, about TVs vs TV's, etc.My addional struggle with this word and others like it, though, is that they have evolved to encompass a whole technology or art that has recently developed and to wit known in the aggregate as "TV". It is no longer thought of as a singular box of one modern technology but usually as an industry. It is encompassing many more features and can no longer be defined simply as a video replication or communication system cum furniture. This also is congruent with how the value of the actual screen component has diminished in price and significance. So it now can be mearly "TV" without plurality like sheep or dishware can be plural.
Is this a weird theory or not theory: (plurality can dissapear as economic or social dependence expands)? Comments? :)
Mod
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