The Sunday regular blog: grammar and such…

There is nothing that so marks a piece of writing as unprofessional as a feral apostrophe.

And yet writing “it’s” when you mean “its” is an easy typo, and one that you can’t pick up with a spellcheck. Happily it usually does jump out at me from my own typing like a red flea on a black and white page. Unhappily, it does the same to me when I read it elsewhere. It prejudices me immediately. (And yet there is a certain member of my own family, who has a Masters from Oxford and a Ph.D from Cornell, who regularly sends me plaintive emails asking, ‘What’s the rule on “its” again?’)

You can’t write: Bagel’s, application’s, war’s, boy’s – when all you mean is more than one bagel, application, war or boy. (And I don’t think there are going to be too many people reading this who think that you can!)
Example: You can write “the boys’ shouting was heard in the next street…”, meaning the shouting of a number of boys was heard; or you can write “The boy’s shouting was heard…” meaning the shouting of one boy was heard. But never, “The boy’s shouting in the next yard were heard all over the neighbourhood.” What you mean is that there were a number of boys shouting and they, the boys, were heard all over the neighbourhood. So it should read: “The boys shouting in the next yard were heard all over the neighbourhood.”.

And you CAN’T write “your’s”, “our’s”, “her’s”, “their’s” either, EVER. Even though possession is involved. There, that’s simple enough, isn’t it? NEVER, ever, ever. Don’t worry about why not, just remember the rule. It’s simple.

The trouble usually come with “its” because sometimes we do insert an apostrophe.