Apostrophe

Apostrophe

Most English nouns have only fou forms: singular, genitive singular, plural, and genitive plural. This is ilusrated by the following :

Singular: Tom is a tenor.

Genitive singular : Tom’s voice is exceptionally fine.

Plural: The Toms are all the singers.

Genitive plural: The Toms’ are exceptionally fine.

In other words, the apostrophe is used to mark the genitive case of nouns.

If a singular noun ends in s, it is genitive form may be either a mere apostrophe or an apostrophe plus an s:

Ross’ smartphone .

Ross’s smartphone .

The letter is probably the more common.

In compound names, the genitive sign is attached only to the last one:

Keith is Lil’s house

Merril,Lynch, Pierce, Fanner, and Smith’s quotation

Some dialects of English have might be called the unmarked genitive. Thus, in at least one dialect, Mary house is the equivalent of the Mark house. It is natua tendency for speaker of a dialect that has the unmarked genetive marker to write exatly what they woud say – tah is, to delet genitive maker in atheir writing . and when they attempt to correct this deviation from Edited Standard English, they tend not to use the apostrophe before the s, so that Mary house becomes Marys house. Notice that bot Mary House and Marys House convey exactly the same meaning as Mary’s house. Therefore, failure to include the genitive marker in either writing or speaking dos not effect meaning. Including the genetive marker S without th apostrophe is also ignificant in terms of meaning. Hoever, Edited Standard English (see the entry) is fairly rigid in its requirements concrning punctuation.Anothe way to put this i to say that economic and socia power – expect all writer to observe the niceties of that writing dialect. Therfore, apostrophe, which is significant so far as meaning is concerned, taes on great significane in the context of the writen language that will accepted by the power elite.

The apostrophe has other conventiiional uses. It show deletions ,as in

The class of ‘ 74

The spirit of ‘76

It is used to indicate the plurals of letters and figures:

George is in his 40’s

Barbara’s s’s look like e,s