An apostrophe ( ’ ) is a punctuation and sometimes diacritic mark in languages written in the Latin alphabet. In English, it marks omissions, forms the possessive, and, in special cases, assists in forming plurals. Punctuation marks are written symbols that do not correspond to either phonemes (sounds) of a spoken language nor to lexemes (words and phrases) of a written language, but which serve to organize or clarify written language. ... A diacritic mark or accent mark is an additional mark added to a basic letter. ... As with any complex, emergent concept, language is somewhat resistant to definition. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world, the standard script of the English language and most of the languages of western and central Europe, and of those areas settled by Europeans. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

English language usage

• An apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters as in:
  • abbreviations, as gov't for government, or '70s for 1970s.
  • contractions, such as can't from cannot and it's from it is or it has.
• An apostrophe is used with an added s to indicate possession, as in Oliver's army, Elizabeth's crown.
• An apostrophe is used by some writers to form a plural for abbreviations and symbols where adding just s rather than ’s would be ambiguous, such as mind your p's and q's. It is not necessary where there is no ambiguity, so CDs not CD's, videos not video's, 1960s not 1960's, 90s or '90s not '90's. (Note that while British English did formerly endorse the use of such apostrophes after numbers and dates, this usage has now largely been superseded.)

Abbreviation (from Latin brevis short) is strictly a shortening, but more particularly, an abbreviation is a letter or group of letters, taken from a word or words, and employed to represent them for the sake of brevity. ... In linguistics, a contraction is the formation of a new word from two or more individual words. ... In the English language, nouns are inflected for grammatical number—that is, singular or plural. ... Diagram showing the geographical locations of selected languages and dialects of the British Isles. ...

Things to note

• The apostrophe in it's marks a contraction of it is or it has. The possessive its has no apostrophe. Many find this confusing. It might help to remember that there is no apostrophe in any of his, hers, its, whose (see below), ours, yours, or theirs. Other pronouns do take a possessive apostrophe: one's, everybody's (along with everyone's, anybody's, and similar), somebody else's, etc.
• Who's means who is or who has. The possessive of who is whose. "The person whose responsibility it is is the member who's oldest."
• You're means you are. This is different from the possessive your. "Your nuts" implies the nuts belong to you. "You're nuts" would mean "You are nuts". Similarly, "You're going" means "You are going". "Your going" refers to the act of going, similar to "his going". "You're going to Mexico. Your going will be helpful to the company."
• Likewise, its role in pluralization of symbols has led to a modern tendency to use the apostrophe incorrectly to form plurals of words, that is plural's of word's, such as the movie title Dating Do's and Don'ts in which the first apostrophe is widely regarded as erroneous.
• When the noun is plural and already ends in s, no extra s is added in the possessive, so pens' lids (where there is more than one pen) rather than pens's lids. If the plural noun doesn't end in s, then add s as usual: children's hats.
• If a name already ends with an s, the extra s is sometimes dropped: Jesus' parables. This is more common in U.S. usage and with classical names (Eros' statue, Herodotus' book). Additionally, many contemporary names that end with -es (a -z sound) will see the extra s dropped by some writers: Charles' car, though most style guides advocate Charles's car.

This last principle may extend to words ending in -x, -z, -ss, or even -ce, though this is far from being universal. Note that some people would say Asterix' sons, others would say Asterix's sons. The formation of possessives in speech is one thing, and how possessives are represented in writing is another; but spoken practice sometimes helps in determining what it is proper to write. It is well to be aware, though, that the following are standard: for convenience' sake; for conscience' sake; for goodness' sake. Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ... Dating Dos and Donts [ sic]1 is a 1949 instructional film designed for high schools, to teach adolescents basic dating skills. ...

It's worth bearing in mind that place names usually take no apostrophe, except in a few special circumstances. This is in fact an emerging standard, and there is a decreasing number of exceptions. Only four place names in the US are officially spelt with an apostrophe (a famous example being Martha's Vineyard). Edinburgh in Scotland has a Princes Street. Prince's would ordinarily take an apostrophe, but in a place name it does not. Most place names are like that. On the other hand, London has a St. James's Park. The special circumstances here may be these: the customary pronunciation of this place name is reflected in the addition of an extra -s. Since usage is firmly against a doubling of the final -s without an apostrophe, this place name has an apostrophe. Edinburgh viewed from Arthurs Seat. ... Princes Street, as viewed facing west from the Scott Monument Princes Street and the Castle at twilight Princes Street is the main shopping street in Edinburgh city centre, although it was originally designed to be a residential street. ... London — containing the City of London — is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England and a major world city. With over seven million inhabitants (Londoners) in Greater London area, it is amongst the most densely populated areas in Western Europe. ... St. ...

Tip

To check you've got it right, swap the sentence around so that the part before the apostrophe becomes the last word. If the sense hasn't changed, you've got it right.

• Pens’ lids becomes lids of the pens.
• Boy's hats becomes hats of the boy.
• Boys' hats becomes hats of the boys.
• Children's hats becomes hats of the children.
• Two weeks' notice becomes notice of two weeks.
• One week's notice becomes notice of one week.
• But childrens' hats becomes hats of the childrens, so it must be wrong.

Greengrocers' apostrophes

Wrongly placed apostrophes are known as Greengrocers' apostrophes (or sometimes, humorously, as Greengrocers apostrophe's), due to their frequent occurrence on hand-written signs on their produce, offering potatoe's, cabbage's, et. al.

Derivation

The use of the apostrophe to note possession in the English language derived from the genitive case, but is now considered a clitic. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... In linguistics, a clitic is a morpheme that functions syntactically like a word, but does not appear as an independent phonological word; instead it is always attached to a following or preceding word. ...

Other languages

• In many European languages, the apostrophe is used to indicate omitted characters, often in a contraction. For example, in the Portuguese language it is used when de (of) can elide with the following word, like galinha d'angola (literally, Angola's chicken) or some poetical constructions, like minh'alma, contraction of "minha alma" (my soul).
• In the Dutch language, it is used for some plurals, e.g. foto's, taxi's, and for the genitive of some proper names, e.g. Anna's, Otto's.
• In the Slovak and Czech languages, common typographic rendering (at least for some typefaces) of caron over lowercase t, d, l, and uppercase L consonants (ď, ť, ľ, Ľ) looks a lot like an apostrophe, but it is very incorrect to use apostrophe instead (compare previous example with incorrect d', t', l', L'). In Slovak, there is also l with acute accent (ĺ, Ĺ). In Slovak, it is used to indicate elision in certain words ("tys'" as an abbreviated form of "ty si"), however, these elisions are restricted to poetry.
• In the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages, the apostrophe is used between a consonant and the following "soft" (iotified) vowel (е, ё, є, ю, я) to indicate that no palatalization of the preceding consonant takes place, and the vowel is pronounced in the same way as at the beginning of the word. The same function is served by the hard sign in some other Cyrillic alphabets.
• In some transliterations from the Cyrillic alphabet (of Belarusian, Russian, or Ukrainian language), It is used to indicate palatalization of the preceding consonant, as in Kievan Rus'.
• Some Karelian orthographies use an apostrophe to indicate palatalization, e.g. n'evvuo "to give advice", d'uuri "just (like)", el'vüttiä "to revive".
• In some languages it represents the glottal stop (as in Hawai'i, see ‘okina) or similar sounds in the Turkic language and in romanizations of Arabic languages. Sometimes this function is performed by the opening single quotation mark.
• In Finnish, one of the consonant gradation patterns is the change of a 'k' into a hiatus or its disappearance, e.g. keko → keon "a pile → pile's". If the resulting word would have two identical vowels adjacent, an apostrophe is placed between them to indicate the hiatus, e.g. ruoko → ruo'on, vaaka → vaa'an. (This is in contrast to compound words, where the same problem is solved with a hyphen, e.g. maa-ala "land area".) The same meaning for an apostrophe, a hiatus, is used in poetry to indicate contractions, e.g. miss' on for missä on "where is".

Portuguese (português) is a Romance language predominantly spoken in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and East Timor. ... In music, see elision (music). ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The Slovak language (slovenčina, slovenský jazyk) is an Indo-European language, more precisely a West Slavic language (together with mainly the Czech, Polish, and Sorbian languages). ... The Czech language is one of the West Slavic languages, along with Slovak, Polish, Pomeranian, and Sorbian. ... HACEK organisms are a subgroup of bacteria. ... See also consonance in music. ... In music, see elision (music). ... Belarusian is the language of the Belarusian nation. ... Ukrainian is an East Slavic language, one of three members of this language group, the other two being Russian and Belarusian. ... Iotation is a form of palatalisation which occurs in Slavic languages. ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... The letter (Ъ, ъ) of the Cyrillic alphabet is known as the hard sign (твёрдый знак ) in the modern Russian alphabet and as er golyam (ер голям, big yer) in the Bulgarian alphabet. ... Transliteration in a narrow sense is a mapping from one script into another script. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Belarusian is the language of the Belarusian nation. ... Russian (русский язык  listen?) is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. ... Ukrainian is an East Slavic language, one of three members of this language group, the other two being Russian and Belarusian. ... Kievan Rus′ (Ки́евская Ру́сь, Kievskaya Rus in Russian; Київська Русь, Kyivs’ka Rus’ in Ukrainian) was the early, mostly East Slavic¹ state dominated by the city of Kiev (ru: Ки́ев, Kiev; uk: Ки́їв, Kyiv), from about 880 to the middle of the 12th century. ... This article is about Karelia, the land of the Karelians, in its broadest meaning. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... The Turkic languages are a group of closely related languages that are spoken by a variety of people distributed across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China. ... A romanization or latinization is a system for representing a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, where the original word or language used a different writing system. ... Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... The symbol ″, while technically the double-prime, is also used to mean inch. ... Consonant gradation is a linguistic term for the changing of consonants. ... Hiatus (derives from Latin : gap; cf. ... Hiatus (derives from Latin : gap; cf. ... A hyphen ( - ) is a punctuation mark. ... Hiatus (derives from Latin : gap; cf. ...

Alternative uses

• The vertical typewriter apostrophe (') is often used to approximate the prime (used a symbol to indicate measurement in feet or arcminutes); the right single quotation mark apostrophe is less appropriate in this context.
• In science fiction, the apostrophe is often used to decorate alien names, e.g. Z'ha'dum in Babylon 5.
• The fictional language of Klingon uses an apostrophe to denote a glottal stop, while the fictional Lojban language uses an apostrophe to denote an voiceless glottal fricative.

This article is not about the symbol for the set of prime numbers, ℙ. The prime (′, Unicode U+2032, ′) is a symbol with many mathematical uses: A complement in set theory: A′ is the complement of the set A A point related to another (e. ... This article is about a foot as a unit of length. ... A minute of arc, arcminute, or MOA is a unit of angular measurement, equal to one sixtieth (1/60) of one degree. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Zhadum is the final episode of the third season of the science fiction television series Babylon 5. ... The Babylon 5 Station Babylon 5 is an epic science fiction television series created, produced, and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... Wikipedia articles written in this language are located at the Lojban Wikipedia Lojban logo The artificial language Lojban (IPA [ˈloʒban], official full name Lojban: a realization of Loglan) was created by the Logical Language Group in 1987 based on the earlier Loglan, with the intent to make the language more... The voiceless glottal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Computers and Unicode

Threre are three types of apostrophe character in Unicode: For alternate meanings, see character. ... In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ...

• ( ' ) Vertical typewriter apostrophe (Unicode name "apostrophe" or "apostrophe-quote"), Unicode and ASCII character 39, or hexadecimal U+0027.
• ( ’ ) Punctuation apostrophe ("right single quotation mark" or "single comma quotation mark"), U+2019.
• ( ʼ ) Letter apostrophe ("modifier letter apostrophe"), U+02BC.

In most cases, the preferred apostrophe character is the punctuation apostrophe (distinguished as typographic, or curly apostrophe). But historically, only the vertical typewriter apostrophe has been present on computer keyboards and in 7-bit ASCII character encoding. The typographic apostrophe is in different positions of the many 8-bit encodings, and entering it from a keyboard requires memorizing obscure combinations or escape sequences. In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ... There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... For alternate meanings, see character. ... In mathematics, hexadecimal or simply hex is a numeral system with a radix or base of 16 usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F or a–f. ... Typography (from the Greek words typos = form and grapho = write) is the art and technique of selecting and arranging type styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character spacing, and word spacing for typeset applications. ... There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... A character encoding is a code that pairs a set of characters (such as an alphabet or syllabary) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses. ...

So in practice, the typewriter apostrophe is much more commonly used by writers and editors. For the same historic reasons, the typewriter apostrophe is a highly overloaded character position. In ASCII, it represents a right single quotation mark, left single quotation mark, apostrophe punctuation, vertical line, or prime (punctuation marks) or an apostrophe modifier or acute accent (modifier letters).

In some cases an apostrophe is not considered punctuation which separates letters, but as a letter in its own right; a letter apostrophe. Examples are in some national languages where the apostrophe is considered a letter (e.g, the Cyrillic Azerbaijani alphabet), or in some transliterations (e.g., transliterated Arabic glottal stop, hamza, or transliterated Cyrillic soft sign). As the letter apostrophe is seldom used in practice, the Unicode standard cautions that one should never assume text is coded thus. The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Two Alphabets Latin Alphabet Used officially since 1991. ... Transliteration in a narrow sense is a mapping from one script into another script. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... Soft Sign (Ь, ь) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian or Ukrainian: myakhkiy znak, мягкий знак). It is named so because it usually indicates softening, or palatalization, of the preceding consonant. ...

The Nenets language has single and double letter apostrophes: Nenets is a language spoken by the Nenets people in North Russia. ...

• ( ˮ ) Double letter apostrophe (Unicode name "modifier letter double apostrophe"), U+02EE.

Entering apostrophes

During text entry, it is common for computer software to automatically convert to the appropriate apostrophe or quotation mark characters; the so-called "smart quotes" feature. Such conversion can be provided by word processing software as-you-type, or on web servers after submitting text in a form field, e.g., on weblogs or free encyclopedias. Many such software programs incorrectly enter an opening quotation mark for a leading apostrophe (e.g., in abbreviations of years: ’04 for 2004), or an apostrophe for a prime (e.g., latitude 49° 53′ 08″).

A useful quick solution to get such cases right in Microsoft Word is to type two apostrophes, and then simply delete the first. Microsoft Word is a word processor program from Microsoft. ...

On Microsoft Windows, Unicode special characters can be entered explicitly by holding the ALT key and typing the four-digit decimal code position of the character. An apostrophe is entered by holding alt while typing 8217. (Typing a three-digit code will enter a character value in the current code page, which may not correspond to its Unicode value.) Microsoft Windows is a range of commercial operating environments for personal computers. ... Code page is the traditional IBM term used for a specific character encoding table: a mapping in which a sequence of bits, usually a single octet representing integer values 0 through 255, is associated with a specific character. ...

On the Apple Macintosh, special characters are typed while holding down the option key, or option and shift keys together. In Macintosh English-language keyboard layouts, an apostrophe is typed with the shortcut option-shift-] Macintosh, also known as Mac, is a family of personal computers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. ...

In publishing, typewriter apostrophes are always converted to typographic apostrophes. To a graphic designer's or typographer's eye, the appearance of the former in print is a glaring sign of unprofessionalism. Because of the egalitarian nature of electronic publishing, and the low resolution of computer monitors in comparison to print, typewriter apostrophes have been considered much more tolerable on the web. However, due to the wide adoption of the Unicode text encoding standard, near-universal web browser support, higher-resolution displays, and advanced anti-aliasing of text in modern operating systems, the use of typographic apostrophes is becoming common on web sites by discerning designers. Unfortunately, such use is not always done in accordance with the standards for character sets and encodings, as mentioned more fully below. Publishing is the activity of putting information in the public arena. ... In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ... In digital signal processing, anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing aliasing when representing a high-resolution signal at a lower resolution. ...

Eight-bit encodings

Older 8-bit character encodings, such as ISO-8859-1, Windows CP1252, or MacRoman, universally support the typewriter apostrophe in the same position, 39, inherited from ASCII (as does Unicode). But most of them place the typographic apostrophe in different positions. ISO-8859-1, the most common encoding used for web pages, omits the typographic apostrophe altogether. ISO 8859-1, more formally cited as ISO/IEC 8859-1 or less formally as Latin-1, is part 1 of ISO/IEC 8859, a standard character encoding defined by ISO. It encodes what it refers to as Latin alphabet no. ...

Microsoft Windows CP1252 (sometimes incorrectly called ANSI or ISO-Latin) is a duplicate of ISO-8859-1, with 27 additional characters in the place of control characters (in the range from 128 to 159). Microsoft software usually treats ISO-8859-1 as if it were CP1252. The wide adoption of Microsoft's web browser and web server has forced many other software makers to adopt this as a de facto convention—in some cases contravening established standards unnecessarily (e.g., some applications use CP1252 character values or HTML entities, where Unicode values are required, and would be sufficient for interoperation with MS software). Consequently, the typographic apostrophe and several other characters are handled inconsistently by web browsers and other software, and can cause interoperation problems. ISO 8859-1, more formally cited as ISO/IEC 8859-1 or less formally as Latin-1, is part 1 of ISO/IEC 8859, a standard character encoding defined by ISO. It encodes what it refers to as Latin alphabet no. ...

References

• Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, 2003. Gotham Books, Toronto (North American edition). ISBN 1-592-40087-6

Lynne Truss is a British writer and journalist. ... Eats, Shoots and Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a short nonfiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC Cutting a Dash radio program. ...

External links

• Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots (http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif) (GIF image, from Bob The Angry Flower (http://www.angryflower.com/))
• Bob's Quick Guide to Destroying the Apostrophe, You Idiots (http://www.angryflower.com/destro.gif) (GIF image, from Bob The Angry Flower (http://www.angryflower.com/))
• Plural's (http://www.angryflower.com/plural.gif) (GIF image, from Bob The Angry Flower (http://www.angryflower.com/))
• alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe newsgroup (news:alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe)
• The Apostrophe Protection Society (http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/)