Section 15.7 The Apostrophe
The apostrophe has two grammatically distinct jobs. Its first job is to mark possession—the genitive relationship between a noun and whatever follows it. Recall from Chapter 5 that English has two ways to express this relationship: a prepositional phrase (the tail of the dog) and the Saxon genitive, which uses an apostrophe-s inflection (the dog’s tail). The apostrophe’s second job is to signal contraction—the omission of one or more letters when two words are reduced to one.
Possession.
Singular nouns: Add ’s
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the dog’s tail
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James’s book (or James’ book)
Plural nouns ending in -s: Add ’
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the dogs’ tails
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the students’ grades
Plural nouns not ending in -s: Add ’s
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the children’s toys
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the women’s team
Contractions.
Apostrophes replace omitted letters:
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don’t (do not)
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it’s (it is or it has)
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they’re (they are)
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won’t (will not)
Common Errors.
Its vs. It’s:
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Its = possessive (The dog wagged its tail.)
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It’s = contraction of it is (It’s raining.)
Their, There, They’re:
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Their = possessive (Their house is big.)
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There = location (Put it over there.)
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They’re = contraction of they are (They’re coming.)
