Thursday, December 30, 2010

Oh! those apostrophes!

I ran into this video through the @AdviceToWriters twitter account and I thought it was quite funny:



Deciding when to use an apostrophe is hard for learners of English as well as for native speakers. The most problematic one is definitely <'s>.

So just to make it clear, these are the three situations where <'s> is grammatically correct:

1) When it indicates possession: This is Christine's backpack.
2) When it substitutes the i in IS: Kevin's happy.
3) When it substitutes the ha in HAS: She's got a nice cat.

That's IT!! So, NEVER use <'s> for plurals!!! (you'll find plenty of those mistakes in the video)

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