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Apostrophe

Encyclopedia

The apostrophe is a punctuation

Punctuation

Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...

mark, and sometimes a diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

or certain other alphabets. In English, it serves three purposes:

The marking of the omission of one or more letters (as in the contraction
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

of do not to don't).
The marking of possessive case
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

(as in the cat's whiskers).
The marking as plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

of written items that are not word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...

s established in English orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

(as in P's and Q's, the late 1950's). (This is considered incorrect by some; see Use in forming certain plurals. The use of the apostrophe to form plurals of proper words, as in apple's, banana's, etc., is universally considered incorrect.)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

(OED), the word comes ultimately from Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, through Latin and French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

.

The apostrophe is different from the closing single quotation mark

Quotation mark

Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...

(usually rendered identically but serving a different purpose), from the similar-looking prime

Prime (symbol)

The prime symbol , double prime symbol , and triple prime symbol , etc., are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics...

( ′ ), which is used to indicate measurement in feet or arcminutes, as well as for various mathematical purposes, and from the [[ʻokina]] ( ), which represents a glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

in Polynesian languages.

Historical development

The apostrophe was introduced into English in the sixteenth century in imitation of French practice.

French practice

Introduced by Geoffroy Tory

Geoffroy Tory

Geoffroy Tory, born in Bourges around 1480 and died in Paris before 14 October 1533, was a French humanist and an engraver, best known for adding written letters in French. His life's work has heavily influenced French publishing to this day.-Biography:...

(1530), the apostrophe was used in place of a vowel letter to indicate elision (as in l'heure in place of la heure). It was frequently used in place of letter e when no actual vowel sound was elided (as in un' heure). Modern French orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

has restored the spelling une heure.

Early English practice

From the sixteenth century, following French practice, the apostrophe was used when a vowel letter was omitted either because of elision

Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

(as is in I'm in place of I am) or because the letter no longer represented a sound (as in lov'd in place of loved). English spelling retained many inflection

Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

s which were often not pronounced as syllables, notably verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

suffix

Suffix

In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

es -est, -eth, -es, -ed and noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

suffix

Suffix

-es representing either plural

Plural

In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

s or possessives

Possessive case

The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

(also known as genitives

Genitive case

In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

). Thus, apostrophe followed by s was often used to mark plural

Plural

, especially when the noun

Noun

was a loan word (as in the two comma's).

Standardisation

The use for elision

Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

has continued to the present day, but significant changes have been made to the possessive

Possessive case

and plural

Plural

uses. By the 18th century, apostrophe + s was regularly used for all possessive

Possessive case

singular

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

forms, even when the letter e was not omitted (as in the gate's height). This was regarded as representing the Old English genitive singular inflection

Inflection

-es. The plural

Plural

use was greatly reduced, but a need was felt to mark possessive

Possessive case

plural

Plural

. The solution was to use an apostrophe after the plural

Plural

s (as in girls' dresses). However, this was not universally accepted until the mid nineteenth century.

Possessive apostrophe

An apostrophe is used in English to indicate possession

Possession (linguistics)

Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses the referent of the other ....

. The practice ultimately derives from the Old English

Old English language

Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...

genitive case: the "of" case, itself used as a possessive in many languages. The genitive form of many nouns ended with the inflection

Inflection

-es, which evolved into a simple -s for the possessive ending. An apostrophe was later added to replace the omitted e (not an omitted his as is often believed).

General principles for the possessive apostrophe

Summary of rules for most situations

Possessive personal pronouns, serving as either noun-equivalents or adjective-equivalents, do not use an apostrophe, even when they end in s. The complete list of those ending in the letter s or the corresponding sound /s/ or /z/ but not taking an apostrophe is ours, yours, his, hers, its, theirs, and whose.
Other pronouns, singular nouns not ending in s, and plural nouns not ending in s all take s in the possessive: e.g., someone's, a cat's toys, women's.

Plural nouns already ending in s take only an apostrophe after the pre-existing s when the possessive is formed: e.g., three cats' toys.

Basic rule (singular nouns)

For most singular nouns the ending 's is added; e.g., the cat's whiskers.

If a singular noun ends with an s-sound (spelled with -s, -se, for example), practice varies as to whether to add or the apostrophe alone. A widely accepted practice is to follow whichever spoken form is judged better: the boss's shoes, Mrs Jones' hat (or Mrs Jones's hat, if that spoken form is preferred). In many cases, both spoken and written forms differ between writers. (See details below.)

Basic rule (plural nouns)
When the noun is a normal plural, with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive; so pens' caps (where there is more than one pen) is correct rather than pens's caps.

If the plural is not one that is formed by adding s, an s is added for the possessive, after the apostrophe: children's hats, women's hairdresser, some people's eyes (but compare some peoples' recent emergence into nationhood, where peoples is meant as the plural of the singular people). These principles are universally accepted.

A few English nouns have plurals that are not spelled with a final s but end in an /s/ or a /z/ sound: mice (plural of mouse, and for compounds like dormouse
Dormouse
Dormice are rodents of the family Gliridae. Dormice are mostly found in Europe, although some live in Africa and Asia. They are particularly known for their long periods of hibernation...

, titmouse
Titmouse
The tits, chickadees, and titmice constitute Paridae, a large family of small passerine birds which occur in the northern hemisphere and Africa...

), dice
Dice
A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

(when used as the plural of die), pence (a plural of penny, with compounds like sixpence that now tend to be taken as singulars). In the absence of specific exceptional treatment in style guides, the possessives of these plurals are formed by adding an apostrophe and an s in the standard way: seven titmice's tails were found, the dice's last fall was a seven, his few pence's value was not enough to buy bread. These would often be rephrased, where possible: the last fall of the dice was a seven.

Basic rule (compound nouns)
Compound nouns have their singular possessives formed with an apostrophe and an added s, in accordance with the rules given above: the Attorney-General's husband; the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports

Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports

The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports is a ceremonial official in the United Kingdom. The post dates from at least the 12th century but may be older. The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was originally in charge of the Cinque Ports, a group of five port towns on the southeast coast of England...

' prerogative; this Minister for Justice's intervention; her father-in-law's new wife.

In such examples, the plurals are formed with an s that does not occur at the end: e.g., attorneys-general. A problem therefore arises with the possessive plurals of these compounds. Sources that rule on the matter appear to favour the following forms, in which there is both an s added to form the plural, and a separate s added for the possessive: the attorneys-general's husbands; successive Ministers for Justice's interventions; their fathers-in-law's new wives. Because these constructions stretch the resources of punctuation beyond comfort, in practice they are normally reworded: interventions by successive Ministers for Justice.

Joint and separate possession
A distinction is made between joint possession (Jason and Sue's e-mails: the e-mails of both Jason and Sue), and separate possession (Jason's and Sue's e-mails: both the e-mails of Jason and the e-mails of Sue). Style guides differ only in how much detail they provide concerning these. Their consensus is that if possession is joint, only the last possessor has possessive inflection; in separate possession all the possessors have possessive inflection. If, however, any of the possessors is indicated by a pronoun, then for both joint and separate possession all of the possessors have possessive inflection (his and her e-mails; his, her, and Anthea's e-mails; Jason's and her e-mails; His and Sue's e-mails; His and Sue's wedding; His and Sue's weddings).

Note that in cases of joint possession, the above rule does not distinguish between a situation in which only one or more jointly possessed items perform a grammatical role and a situation in which both one or more such items and a non-possessing entity independently perform that role. Although verb number suffices in some cases ("Jason and Sue's dog has porphyria") and context suffices in others ("Jason and Sue's e-mails rarely exceed 200 characters in length"), number and grammatical position often prevent a resolution of ambiguity:

Where multiple items are possessed and context is not dispositive, a rule forbidding distribution of the possessive merely shifts ambiguity: suppose that Jason and Sue had one or more children who died in a car crash and that none of Jason's children by anyone other than Sue were killed. Under a rule forbidding distribution of the joint possessive, writing "Jason and Sue's children [rather than "Jason's and Sue's children"] died in the crash" eliminates the implication that Jason lost children of whom Sue was not the mother, but it introduces ambiguity as to whether Jason himself was killed.

Moreover, if only one item is possessed, the rule against distribution of the joint possessive introduces ambiguity (unless the context
Context (language use)
Context is a notion used in the language sciences in two different ways, namely as* verbal context* social context- Verbal context :...

happens to resolve it): read in light of a rule requiring distribution, the sentence "Jason and Sue's dog died after being hit by a bus" makes clear that the dog belonged to Sue alone and that Jason survived or was not involved, whereas a rule prohibiting distribution forces ambiguity as to both whether Jason (co-)owned the dog and whether he was killed.

With other punctuation; compounds with pronouns
If the word or compound includes, or even ends with, a punctuation mark, an apostrophe and an s are still added in the usual way: "Westward Ho!
Westward Ho!
Westward Ho! is a seaside village near Bideford in Devon, England. The A39 road provides access from the towns of Barnstaple, Bideford and Bude...

's railway station;" Awaye!'s Paulette Whitten recorded Bob Wilson's story; Washington, D.C.'s museums, assuming that the prevailing style requires full stops in D.C.

If the word or compound already includes a possessive apostrophe, a double possessive results: Tom's sisters' careers; the head of marketing's husband's preference; the master of foxhounds'
Fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...

best dog's death. Some style guides, while allowing that these constructions are possible, advise rephrasing: the preference of the head of marketing's husband. If an original apostrophe, or apostrophe with s, occurs at the end, it is left by itself to do double duty: Our employees are better paid than McDonald's employees; Standard & Poor's indexes are widely used; the 5uu's first album (the fixed forms of McDonald's
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

and Standard & Poor's
Standard & Poor's
Standard & Poor's is a United States-based financial services company. It is a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks and bonds. It is well known for its stock-market indices, the US-based S&P 500, the Australian S&P/ASX 200, the Canadian...

already include possessive apostrophes; 5uu's
5uu's
The 5uu's were an American avant-rock group founded in Los Angeles, California in 1984 by drummer-composer Dave Kerman. The group released their first album in 1986 and recorded a second in 1988 with Motor Totemist Guild, a similar band from the area. The two groups merged in 1988 to form U Totem...

already has a non-possessive apostrophe before its final s). For similar cases involving geographical names, see below.

By extended application of the principles stated above, the possessives of all phrases whose wording is fixed are formed in the same way:
- "Us and Them"'s inclusion on the album The Dark Side of the Moon
  The Dark Side of the Moon
  The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in March 1973. It built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings and live shows, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure...
- Was She
  She (novel)
  She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is a novel by Henry Rider Haggard, first serialized in The Graphic magazine from October 1886 to January 1887. She is one of the classics of imaginative literature, and with over 83 million copies sold in 44 different languages, one of the best-selling books...
  
  success greater, or King Solomon's Mines
  King Solomon's Mines
  King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party...
  
  ?

For complications with foreign phrases and titles, see below.

Time, money, and similar
An apostrophe is used in time and money references, among others, in constructions such as one hour's respite, two weeks' holiday, a dollar's worth, five pounds' worth, one mile's drive from here. This is like an ordinary possessive use. For example, one hour's respite means a respite of one hour (exactly as the cat's whiskers means the whiskers of the cat). Exceptions are accounted for in the same way: three months pregnant (in modern usage, we do not say pregnant of three months, nor one month(')s pregnant).

Possessive pronouns and adjectives
No apostrophe is used in the following possessive pronouns and adjectives: yours, his, hers, ours, its, theirs, and whose.

The possessive of it was originally it's, and many people continue to write it this way, though the apostrophe was dropped in the early 1800s and authorities are now unanimous that it's can be only a contraction of it is or it has. For example, US President Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

used it's as a possessive in his instructions dated 20 June 1803 to Lewis for his preparations for his great expedition.

All other possessive pronouns ending in s do take an apostrophe: one's; everyone's; somebody's, nobody else's, etc. With plural forms, the apostrophe follows the s, as with nouns: the others' husbands (but compare They all looked at each other's husbands, in which both each and other are singular).

Importance for disambiguation
Each of these four phrases (listed in Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...

's The Language Instinct

The Language Instinct

The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...

) has a distinct meaning:

My sister's friend's investments (the investments belonging to a friend of my sister)

My sister's friends' investments (the investments belonging to several friends of my sister)

My sisters' friend's investments (the investments belonging to a friend of several of my sisters)

My sisters' friends' investments (the investments belonging to several friends of several of my sisters)

Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

, on being challenged to produce a sentence whose meaning depended on a possessive apostrophe, came up with:

Those things over there are my husband's. (Those things over there belong to my husband.)

Those things over there are my husbands'. (Those things over there belong to several husbands of mine.)

Those things over there are my husbands. (I'm married to those men over there.)

Singular nouns ending with an "s" or "z" sound

This subsection deals with singular nouns pronounced with a sibilant sound at the end: /s/ or /z/. The spelling of these ends with -s, -se, -z, -ze, -ce, -x, or -xe.

Many respected authorities recommend that practically all singular nouns, including those ending with a sibilant sound, have possessive forms with an extra s after the apostrophe so that the spelling reflects the underlying pronunciation. Examples include Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

, the Modern Language Association, and The Economist

The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

. Such authorities demand possessive singulars like these: Senator Jones's umbrella; Mephistopheles's cat. However, some contemporary writers still follow the older practice of omitting the extra s in all cases ending with a sibilant, but usually not when written -x or -xe. Some contemporary authorities such as the Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...

recommend or allow the practice of omitting the extra "s" in all words ending with an "s", but not in words ending with other sibilants ("z" and "x"). The 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style still recommended the traditional practice, which included providing for several exceptions to accommodate spoken usage such as the omission of the extra s after a polysyllabic word ending in a sibilant. The 16th edition of CMOS no longer recommends omitting the extra "s".
Rules that modify or extend the standard principle have included the following:

If the singular possessive is difficult or awkward to pronounce with an added sibilant, do not add an extra s; these exceptions are supported by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

and The American Heritage
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is an American dictionary of the English language published by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969...

Book of English Usage. Such sources permit possessive singulars like these: Socrates' later suggestion; James's house, or James' house, depending on which pronunciation is intended.

Classical, biblical, and similar names ending in a sibilant, especially if they are polysyllabic, do not take an added s in the possessive; among sources giving exceptions of this kind are The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

and The Elements of Style, which make general stipulations, and Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...

, which mentions only Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

and Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

. As a particular case, Jesus' is very commonly written instead of Jesus's – even by people who would otherwise add 's in, for example, James's or Chris's. Jesus' is referred to as "an accepted liturgical archaism" in Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford was an authoritative reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press...

.

Similar examples of notable names ending in an s that are often given a possessive apostrophe with no additional s include Dickens and Williams. There is often a policy of leaving off the additional s on any such name, but this can prove problematic when specific names are contradictory (for example, St James' Park

St James' Park

St James' Park, known for sponsorship reasons as the Sports Direct Arena, is an all-seater stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It is the home of Newcastle United Football Club and is the sixth largest football stadium in the United Kingdom with a capacity of between 52,387 and 52,409.St James'...

in Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

[the football ground] and the area of St. James's Park

St. James's Park

St. James's Park is a 23 hectare park in the City of Westminster, central London - the oldest of the Royal Parks of London. The park lies at the southernmost tip of the St. James's area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St. James the Less.- Geographical location :St. James's...

in London). For more details on practice with geographic names, see the relevant section below.

Some writers like to reflect standard spoken practice in cases like these with sake: for convenience' sake, for goodness' sake, for appearance' sake, for compromise' sake, etc. This punctuation is preferred in major style guides. Others prefer to add 's: for convenience's sake. Still others prefer to omit the apostrophe when there is an s sound before sake: for morality's sake, but for convenience sake.

Nouns ending with silent "s", "x" or "z"

The English possessive of French nouns ending in a silent s, x, or z is rendered differently by different authorities. Some prefer Descartes' and Dumas', while others insist on Descartes's and Dumas's. Certainly a sibilant is pronounced in these cases; the theoretical question is whether the existing final letter is sounded or whether s needs to be added. Similar examples with x or z: Sauce Périgueux's main ingredient is truffle; His pince-nez

Pince-nez

Pince-nez are a style of spectacles, popular in the 19th century, which are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from French pincer, to pinch, and nez, nose....

's loss went unnoticed; "Verreaux('s) eagle, a large, predominantly black eagle, Aquila verreauxi,..." (OED, entry for "Verreaux", with silent x; see Verreaux's eagle
Verreaux's Eagle
Verreaux's Eagle , alternatively known as the Black Eagle , is a large bird of prey. This eagle lives in hilly and mountaineous regions of southern and eastern Africa , and very locally in Western Asia.- Description :It is long. Males weigh and females weigh...

); in each of these some writers might omit the added s. The same principles and residual uncertainties apply with "naturalised" English words, like Illinois and Arkansas.

For possessive plurals of words ending in silent x, z or s, the few authorities that address the issue at all typically call for an added s and require that the apostrophe precede the s: The Loucheux's homeland is in the Yukon; Compare the two Dumas's literary achievements. The possessive of a cited French title with a silent plural ending is uncertain: "Trois femmes's long and complicated publication history", but "Les noces' singular effect was 'exotic primitive'..." (with nearby sibilants -ce- in noces and s- in singular). Compare treatment of other titles, above.

Guides typically seek a principle that will yield uniformity, even for foreign words that fit awkwardly with standard English punctuation.

Possessives in geographic names

Place names in the United States generally do not use the possessive apostrophe on federal maps and signs. The United States Board on Geographic Names

United States Board on Geographic Names

The United States Board on Geographic Names is a United States federal body whose purpose is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the U.S. government.-Overview:...

, which has responsibility for formal naming of municipalities and geographic features, has deprecated the use of possessive apostrophes since 1890 so as not to show ownership of the place. Only five names of natural features in the U.S. are officially spelled with a genitive apostrophe (one example being Martha's Vineyard

Martha's Vineyard

Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....

). "

On the other hand, the United Kingdom has Bishop's Stortford

Bishop's Stortford

Bishop's Stortford is a historic market town and civil parish in the district of East Hertfordshire in the county of Hertfordshire in England. It is situated just west of the M11 motorway, on the county boundary with Essex and is the closest large town to London Stansted Airport and part of the...

, Bishop's Castle

Bishop's Castle

Bishop's Castle is a small market town in Shropshire, England, and formerly its smallest borough. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 1,630. Bishop's Castle is east of the Wales-England border, about north-west of Ludlow and about south-west of Shrewsbury. To the south is Clun...

and King's Lynn

King's Lynn

King's Lynn is a sea port and market town in the ceremonial county of Norfolk in the East of England. It is situated north of London and west of Norwich. The population of the town is 42,800....

(but St Albans

St Albans

St Albans is a city in southern Hertfordshire, England, around north of central London, which forms the main urban area of the City and District of St Albans. It is a historic market town, and is now a sought-after dormitory town within the London commuter belt...

, St Andrews

St Andrews

St Andrews is a university town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle.St Andrews has a population of 16,680, making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....

and St Helens

St Helens, Merseyside

St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England. It is the largest settlement and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens with a population of just over 100,000, part of an urban area with a total population of 176,843 at the time of the 2001 Census...

possibly because their names date to before the use was formalised) and, while Newcastle United

Newcastle United F.C.

Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional association football club based in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End, and has played at its current home ground, St James' Park, since the merger...

play at St James' Park

St James' Park

, and Exeter City at St James Park, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

has a St James's Park (this whole area of London is named after St James's Church, Piccadilly

St James's Church, Piccadilly

St James’s Church, Piccadilly is an Anglican church on Piccadilly in the centre of London, UK. It was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren....

). The special circumstances of the latter case may be this: 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. This could be regarded as an example of a double genitive: it refers to the park of the church of St James.

Omission of the apostrophe in geographical names is becoming standard in some English-speaking countries, including Australia. Modern usage has been influenced by considerations of technological convenience including the economy of typewriter ribbons and films, and similar computer character "disallowance" which tend to ignore traditional canons of correctness. Practice in the United Kingdom and Canada is not so uniform.

Possessives in names of organizations

Sometimes the apostrophe is omitted in the names of clubs, societies, and other organizations, even though the standard principles seem to require it: Country Women's Association

Country Women's Association

The Country Women’s Association of Australia is the largest women's organisation in Australia. It has 44,000 members across 1855 branches. Its aims are to improve the conditions for country women and children and to try to make life better for women and their families, especially those women...

, but International Aviation Association; Magistrates' Court of Victoria

Magistrates' Court of Victoria

The Magistrates' Court of Victoria is the lowest court in the Victorian court system, with the County Court of Victoria and the Supreme Court of Victoria respectively judicially higher...

, but Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union

Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union

The Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union was an Australian trade union that covered "mostly work associated with chipping, painting, scrubbing, cleaning, working in every size of tanks, cleaning boilers, docking and undocking vessels, and rigging work"...

. Usage is variable and inconsistent. Style guides typically advise consulting an official source for the standard form of the name; some tend towards greater prescriptiveness, for or against such an apostrophe. As the case of shows, it is not possible to analyze these forms simply as non-possessive plurals, since women is the only correct plural form of woman.

Possessives in business names

Where a business name is based on a family name it should take an apostrophe, but many leave it out (contrast Sainsbury's with Harrods

Harrods

Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...

). In recent times there has been an increasing tendency to drop the apostrophe. Names based on a first name are more likely to take an apostrophe (Joe's Crab Shack). Some business names may inadvertently spell a different name if the name with an s at the end is also a name, such as Parson.
A small activist group called the Apostrophe Protection Society

Apostrophe Protection Society

The Apostrophe Protection Society is a UK society that has "the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark"...

has campaigned for large retailers such as Harrods, Currys

Currys

Currys is an electrical retailer in the United Kingdom and Ireland and is owned by Dixons Retail plc. It specialises in selling home electronics and household appliances, with 295 superstores and 73 high street stores...

, and Selfridges

Selfridges

Selfridges, AKA Selfridges & Co, is a chain of high end department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK and was opened on 15 March 1909.More recently, three other stores have been...

to reinstate their missing punctuation. A spokesperson for Barclays PLC

Barclays plc

Barclays PLC is a global banking and financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. As of 2010 it was the world's 10th-largest banking and financial services group and 21st-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine...

stated, "It has just disappeared over the years. Barclays is no longer associated with the family name." Further confusion can be caused by businesses whose names tend to look like they are pronounced differently without an apostrophe such as Paulos Circus, and other companies that leave the apostrophe out of their logos but include it in written text, such as Waterstone's

Waterstone's

Waterstone's is a British book specialist established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone that employs around 4,500 staff throughout the United Kingdom and Europe....

and Cadwalader's.

Apostrophe showing omission

An apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters, normally letters:

It is used in contractions
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

, such as can't from cannot, it's from it is or it has, and I'll from I will or I shall.

It is used in abbreviation
Abbreviation
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...

s, as gov't for government. It may indicate omitted numbers where the spoken form is also capable of omissions, as 70s for 1970s representing seventies for nineteen-seventies. In modern usage, apostrophes are generally omitted when letters are removed from the start of a word, particularly for a compound word. For example, it is not common to write bus (for omnibus), phone (telephone), net (Internet). However, if the shortening is unusual, dialectal or archaic, the apostrophe may still be used to mark it (e.g., bout for about, less for unless, twas for it was). Sometimes a misunderstanding of the original form of a word results in an incorrect contraction. A common example: til for until, though till is in fact the original form, and until is derived from it.
- The spelling fo'c's'le, contracted from the nautical term forecastle, is unusual for having three apostrophes. The spelling bo's'n's (from boatswain's), as in Bo's'n's Mate, also has three apostrophes, two showing omission and one possession. Fo'c's'le may also take a possessive s – as in the fo'c's'le's timbers – giving four apostrophes in one word.

It is sometimes used when the normal form of an inflection seems awkward or unnatural; for example, KO'd rather than KOed (where KO is used as a verb meaning "to knock out"); "a spare pince-nez'd man" (cited in OED, entry for "pince-nez"; pince-nezed is also in citations).

In certain colloquial contexts, an apostrophe's function as possessive or contractive can depend on other punctuation.
- We rehearsed for Friday's opening night. (We rehearsed for the opening night on Friday.)
- We rehearsed, for Friday's opening night. (We rehearsed because Friday is opening night. "Friday's" here is a contraction of "Friday is.")

Eye dialect
Eye dialect
Eye dialect is the use of non-standard spelling for speech to draw attention to pronunciation. The term was originally coined by George P. Krapp to refer to the literary technique of using non-standard spelling that implies a pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard, such as...

s use apostrophes in creating the effect of a non-standard pronunciation.

Use in forming certain plurals

An apostrophe is used by some writers to form a plural
English plural
In the English language, nouns are inflected for grammatical number —that is, singular or plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed for nouns...

for abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols where adding just s rather than s may leave things ambiguous or inelegant. Some specific cases:

It is generally acceptable to use apostrophes to show plurals of single lower-case letters, such as be sure to dot your i's and cross your t's. Some style guides would prefer to use a change of font: dot your is and cross your ts. Some style guides rule that upper case letters need no apostrophe (I got three As in my exams) except when there is a risk of misreading, such as at the start of a sentence: A's are the highest marks achievable in these exams.
For groups of years, the apostrophe at the end may be regarded as unnecessary, since there is no possibility of misreading. For this reason, some style guides prefer 1960s to 1960's (although the latter is noted by at least one source as acceptable in American usage), and 90s or 90s to 90's or 90's.
The apostrophe is sometimes used in forming the plural of numbers (for example, 1000's of years); however, as with groups of years, it is unnecessary because there is no possibility of misreading. Most sources are against this usage.
The apostrophe is often used in plurals of symbols. Again, since there can be no misreading, this is often regarded as incorrect. That page has too many &s and #s on it.

Use in non-English names

Names that are not strictly native to English sometimes have an apostrophe substituted to represent other characters (see also As a mark of elision, below).

Anglicised versions of Irish surnames often contain an apostrophe after an O, for example O'Doole.
Some Scottish
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...

and Irish
Irish name
A formal Irish-language name consists of a given name and a surname. Surnames in Irish are generally patronymic in etymology, although they are no longer literal patronyms, as Icelandic names are...

surnames use an apostrophe after an M, for example M'Gregor. The apostrophe here may be seen as marking a contraction where the prefix Mc or Mac would normally appear. (In earlier and meticulous current usage, the symbol is actually ‘ – a kind of reversed apostrophe that is sometimes called a turned comma, which eventually came to be written as the letter c, whose shape is similar.)
In science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

, the apostrophe is often used in alien names, sometimes to indicate a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

(for example T'Pau in Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

), but also sometimes simply for decoration.

Use in transliterations

In transliterated

Transliteration

Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

foreign words, an apostrophe may be used to separate letters or syllables that otherwise would likely be interpreted incorrectly. For example:

in the Arabic word mus'haf, a transliteration of , the syllables are as in mus·haf, not mu·shaf
in the Japanese name Shin'ichi
Shin'ichi
Shin'ichi or Shinichi is a very common masculine Japanese given name. Shin and ichi are separated and it is pronounced .-Possible writings:Different kanji that are pronounced are combined with the kanji for " to give different names:...

, the apostrophe shows that the pronunciation is shi·n·i·chi (hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

), where the letters n and i are separate moras
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...

, rather than shi·ni·chi .
in the Chinese Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

romanization, when two hanzi are combined to form one word, if the resulting Pinyin representation can be mis-interpreted they should be separated by an apostrophe. For example, 先 (xiān) 西安 (xī'ān).

Furthermore, an apostrophe may be used to indicate a glottal stop

Glottal stop

in transliterations. For example:

in the Arabic word Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

, a common transliteration of (part of) al-qur'ān, the apostrophe corresponds to the letter hamza, one of the letters in the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...

.

Non-standard English use

Failure to observe standard use of the apostrophe is widespread and frequently criticised as incorrect, often generating heated debate. The British founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society

Apostrophe Protection Society

The Apostrophe Protection Society is a UK society that has "the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark"...

earned a 2001 Ig Nobel prize for "efforts to protect, promote and defend the differences between plural and possessive". A 2004 report by OCR

OCR (examination board)

OCR is an examination board that sets examinations and awards qualifications . It is one of England, Wales and Northern Ireland's five main examination boards....

, a British examination board, stated that "the inaccurate use of the apostrophe is so widespread as to be almost universal". A 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use the apostrophe correctly.

Superfluous apostrophes ("greengrocers' apostrophes")

Apostrophes used in a non-standard manner to form noun

Noun

plural

Plural

s are known as greengrocers' apostrophes or grocers' apostrophes, often called (spelled) greengrocer's apostrophes and grocer's apostrophes. They are sometimes humorously called greengrocers apostrophe's, rogue apostrophes, or idiot's apostrophes (a literal translation of the German word Deppenapostroph, which criticises the misapplication of apostrophes in Denglisch

Denglisch

Denglisch or Denglish is a portmanteau of the German words Deutsch and Englisch. Used in all German-speaking and Dutch-speaking countries, it describes an influx of English, or pseudo-English, vocabulary into the German or Dutch language through travel and the widespread usage of English in...

). The practice, once common and acceptable (see Historical development), comes from the identical sound of the plural

Plural

and possessive

Possessive case

forms of most English noun

Noun

s. It is often criticised as a form of hypercorrection

Hypercorrection

In linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...

coming from a widespread ignorance of the proper use of the apostrophe or of punctuation in general. Lynne Truss

Lynne Truss

Lynne Truss is an English writer and journalist, best known for her popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.-Early life:...

, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and...

, points out that before the 19th century, it was standard orthography to use the apostrophe to form a plural of a foreign-sounding word that ended in a vowel (e.g., banana's, folio's, logo's, quarto's, pasta's, ouzo's) to clarify pronunciation. Truss says this usage is no longer considered proper in formal writing.

The term is believed to have been coined in the middle of the 20th century by a teacher of languages working in Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, at a time when such mistakes were common in the handwritten signs and advertisements of greengrocer

Greengrocer

A greengrocer or fruiterer is a retail trader in fruit and vegetables; that is, in green groceries. Greengrocer is primarily a British and Australian term, and greengrocers' shops were once common in suburbs, towns and villages...

s (e.g., Apple's 1/-
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...

a pound, Orange's 1/6d
Penny
A penny is a coin or a type of currency used in several English-speaking countries. It is often the smallest denomination within a currency system.-Etymology:...

a pound). Some have argued that its use in mass communication by employees of well-known companies has led to the less literate assuming it to be correct and adopting the habit themselves.

The same use of apostrophe before noun

Noun

plural

Plural

-s forms is sometimes made by non-native speakers of English. For example, in Dutch, the apostrophe is inserted before the s when pluralising most words ending in a vowel or y for example, baby's (English babies) and jury's (English juries). This often produces so-called "Dunglish
Dunglish
Dunglish or Dutch English are the mistakes native Dutch speakers make when speaking English....

" errors when carried over into English. Hyperforeignism
Hyperforeignism
A hyperforeignism is a non-standard language form resulting from an unsuccessful attempt to apply the rules of a foreign language to a loan word , or occasionally to a word believed to be a loan word. The result reflects "neither the .....

has been formalised in some pseudo-anglicism
Anglicism
An Anglicism, as most often defined, is a word borrowed from English into another language. "Anglicism" also describes English syntax, grammar, meaning, and structure used in another language with varying degrees of corruption.-Anglicisms in Chinese:...

s. For example, the French word pin's (from English pin) is used (with the apostrophe in both singular and plural) for collectable lapel pin
Lapel pin
A lapel pin is a small pin often worn on the lapel of a dress jacket. Lapel pins can be purely ornamental or can indicate the wearer's affiliation with an organization or cause; for example, American Flag lapel pins became very popular in the United States, especially among politicians, following...

s. Similarly, there is an Andorra
Andorra
Andorra , officially the Principality of Andorra , also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra, , is a small landlocked country in southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe having an area of...

n football club called FC Rànger's
FC Rànger's
FC Rànger's is an Andorran football club, who currently plays in the Andorran First Division.- History :...

(after such British clubs as Rangers F.C.
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland, who play in the Scottish Premier League. The club are nicknamed the Gers, Teddy Bears and the Light Blues, and the fans are known to each other as bluenoses...

), a Japanese dance group called Super Monkey's
Super Monkey's
was an Okinawan pop-singing and dancing group that spawned the careers of Namie Amuro and some members of the girl group, MAX. The group went through several member and name changes before coming into prominence in 1995 with the release of their fifth single, Try Me ~Watashi o Shinjite~.- Pre-debut...

, and a Japanese pop punk
Pop punk
Pop punk is a fusion music genre that combines elements of punk rock with pop music, to varying degrees. Allmusic describes the genre as a strand of alternative rock, which typically merges pop melodies with speedy punk tempos, chord changes and loud guitars...

band called the Titan Go King's.

The widespread use of apostrophes before the s of plural nouns has led some to believe, incorrectly, that an apostrophe is also needed before the s of the third-person present tense of a verb. Thus, he take's, it begin's, etc.

Omission

There is a tendency to drop apostrophes in many commonly used names such as St Annes
Lytham St Annes
Lytham St Annes is a conurbation in the Fylde district of Lancashire, England. The neighbouring towns of Lytham and St-Anne's-on-the-Sea have grown together and now form a seaside resort...

, St Johns Lane, and so on.

In 2009, a resident in Royal Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in west Kent, England, about south-east of central London by road, by rail. The town is close to the border of the county of East Sussex...

was accused of vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...

after he painted apostrophes on road signs that had spelt St John's Close as St Johns Close.

UK supermarket chain Tesco
Tesco
Tesco plc is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues and the second-largest measured by profits...

omits the mark where standard practice would require it. Signs in Tesco advertise (among other items) . In his book Troublesome Words

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words is a book by Bill Bryson, first released 1984, that catalogues some of the English language's most commonly misused words and phrases in order to demonstrate correct usage....

, author Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before moving back to the US in 1995...

lambasts Tesco for this, stating that "the mistake is inexcusable, and those who make it are linguistic Neanderthals."

Advocates of greater or lesser use

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, a proponent of English spelling reform

Spelling reform

Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common....

on phonetic principles, argued that the apostrophe was mostly redundant. He did not use it for spelling cant, hes, etc. in many of his writings. He did however allow I'm and it's. Hubert Selby, Jr.
Hubert Selby, Jr.
Hubert "Cubby" Selby, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His best-known novels are Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream . Both novels were later adapted into films within his lifetime....

used a slash instead of an apostrophe mark for contractions and did not use an apostrophe at all for possessives. Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

made greater use of apostrophes, and frequently used sha'n't, with an apostrophe in place of the elided "ll" as well as the more usual "o". Neither author's use has become widespread.

Other misuses

The British pop group Hear'Say

Hear'Say

Hear'Say were a British manufactured pop group created in February 2001 from the winners of Popstars, an ITV reality TV show based on a New Zealand show of the same name. They enjoyed huge success with their debut single "Pure and Simple", helped by the publicity surrounding Popstars, the first of...

famously made unconventional use of an apostrophe in its name. Truss comments that "the naming of Hear'Say in 2001 was [...] a significant milestone on the road to punctuation anarchy". Dexys Midnight Runners

Dexys Midnight Runners

Dexys Midnight Runners are a British pop group with soul influences, who achieved their major success in the early to mid 1980s. They are best known for their songs "Come On Eileen" and "Geno", both of which went No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart....

, on the other hand, omit the apostrophe (though "dexys" can be understood as a plural form of "dexy", rather than a possessive form).

An apostrophe wrongly thought to be misused in popular culture occurs in the name of Liverpudlian rock band The La's

The La's

The La's were an English rock band from Liverpool, originally active from the mid-1980s to early 1990s. Fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist Lee Mavers, the group is most famous for their hit single "There She Goes". The band was formed by Mike Badger in 1984 and Mavers joined soon after...

. This apostrophe is often thought to be a mistake; but in fact it marks omission of the letter d. The name comes from the Scouse
Scouse
Scouse is an accent and dialect of English found primarily in the Metropolitan county of Merseyside, and closely associated with the city of Liverpool and the adjoining urban areas such as the boroughs of south Sefton, Knowsley and the Wirral...

slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

for "The Lads".

Criticism

Over the years, the use of apostrophes has been criticized. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

called them "uncouth bacilli". In his book, American Speech, linguist Steven Byington stated of the apostrophe that "the language would be none the worse for its abolition." Adrian Room in his English Journal

English Journal

English Journal is the official publication of the Secondary Education section of the American National Council of Teachers of English...

article "Axing the Apostrophe" argued that apostrophes are unnecessary and context will resolve any ambiguity. Again in an English Journal article, Peter Brodie stated that apostrophes are "largely decorative [and] rarely clarify meaning". Dr. John C. Wells
John C. Wells
John Christopher Wells is a British phonetician and Esperanto teacher. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics....

, Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

, says the apostrophe is "a waste of time". Peter Buck
Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck , is an American rock guitarist who is best known for playing in and co-founding alternative rock band R.E.M....

, guitarist of R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...

, claimed, apparently forgetful of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...

, "We all hate apostrophes. There's never been a good rock album that's had an apostrophe in the title."

As a mark of elision

In many languages, especially European languages, the apostrophe is used to indicate the elision

Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

of one or more sounds, as in English.

In Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

the apostrophe is used to show that letters have been omitted from words. The most common use is in the indefinite article 'n, which is a contraction of een meaning "one" (the number). As the initial e is omitted and cannot be capitalised, if a sentence begins with 'n the second word in the sentence is capitalised. For example: 'n Boom is groen, "A tree is green". In addition, the apostrophe is used for plurals and diminutives where the root ends with certain vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s, e.g. foto's, taxi's, Lulu's, Lulu'tjie, garage's etc.

In Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, apostrophes are sometimes seen on commercial
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

materials. One might commonly see Ta' mig med ("Take me with [you]") next to a stand with advertisement leaflets; that would be written Tag mig med in standard orthography. As in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, the apostrophe must not be used to indicate the possessive, except when there is already an s present in the base form, as in Lukas' bog.

In Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, the apostrophe is used to indicate omitted characters. For example, the indefinite article een can be shortened to 'n, and the definite article het shortened to 't. When this happens in the first word of a sentence, the second word of the sentence is capitalised. In general, this way of using the apostrophe is considered non-standard, except in 's morgens, 's middags, 's avonds, 's nachts (for des morgens, des middags, des avonds, des nachts: "at morning, at afternoon, at evening, at night"). In addition, the apostrophe is used for plurals where the singulars end with certain vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s, e.g. foto's, taxi's; and for the genitive of proper names ending with these vowels, e.g. Anna's, Otto's. These are in fact elided vowels; use of the apostrophe prevents spellings like fotoos and Annaas.

The Fundamento de Esperanto
Fundamento de Esperanto
The Fundamento de Esperanto is a book by L. L. Zamenhof, published in the spring of 1905. On August 9, 1905 it was made the official source for the language by the fourth article of the Declaration of Boulogne at the first World Congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France:It is considered...

limits the elision mark to the definite article l' (from la) and singular nominative nouns (kor' from koro, "heart"). This is mostly confined to poetry. Non-standard dank' al (from danke al, "thanks to") and del' (from de la, "of the") are nonetheless frequent. In-word elision is usually marked with a hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...

, as in D-ro (from doktoro, "Dr"). Some early guides used and advocated the use of apostrophes between word parts, to aid recognition of such compound words as gitar'ist'o, "guitarist".

In Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

and Occitan word sequences such as (coup) d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

, (maître) d'hôtel (often shortened to maître d, when used in English), L'Aquila
L'Aquila
L'Aquila is a city and comune in central Italy, both the capital city of the Abruzzo region and of the Province of L'Aquila. , it has a population of 73,150 inhabitants, but has a daily presence in the territory of 100,000 people for study, tertiary activities, jobs and tourism...

and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat or briefly L'Hospitalet is a city to the immediate southwest of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain, and the second largest in Catalonia by population...

the final vowel in the first word (de "of", la "the", etc.) is elided because the word that follows it starts with a vowel or a mute h
H
H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....

. Similarly, French has qu'il instead of que il ("that he"), c'est instead of ce est ("it is or it's"), and so on. Catalan, French, Italian and Occitan surnames sometimes contain apostrophes of elision, e.g. d'Alembert, D'Angelo.

French feminine singular possessive adjectives do not undergo elision, but change to the masculine form instead: ma preceding église becomes mon église ("my church").

In Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

the apostrophe is also used in some few combinations such as caixa-d'água ("water tower"), galinha-d'angola ("Helmeted Guineafowl"), pau-d'alho ("Gallesia integrifolia"), etc. Portuguese has many contractions between prepositions and articles or pronouns (like na for en + a), but these are written without an apostrophe. Portuguese uses a grave accent to indicate an unstressed a has been elided with a following stressed one, so one writes (and says) àquela hora instead of a aquela hora.

Modern Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

no longer uses the apostrophe to indicate elision in standard writing, although it can sometimes be found in older poetry for that purpose. Instead Spanish writes out the spoken elision in full (de enero, mi hijo) except for the contraction del for de + el, which uses no apostrophe. Spanish also switches to the masculine article immediately before a feminine noun beginning with a stressed a instead of writing (or saying) an elision: un águila blanca, el águila blanca, and el agua pura but una/la blanca águila and la pura agua. This reflects the origin of the Spanish definite articles from the Latin demonstratives ille/illa/illum. Although forms with an apostrophe indicating elision, especially m'ijo and mi'ija for mi hijo and mi hija, can be found in informal writing, this is considered nonstandard.

German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

usage is very similar: an apostrophe is used almost exclusively to indicate omitted letters. It must not be used for plurals or most of the possessive forms (Max' Vater [Max's father] being one of very few exceptions); although both usages are widespread, they are deemed incorrect. The German equivalent of greengrocers' apostrophes would be the derogatory Deppenapostroph ("idiots' apostrophe" (See the article Apostrophitis in German Wikipedia).

In modern printings of Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

, apostrophes are also used to mark elision. Certain Ancient Greek words that end in short vowels elide when the next word starts with a vowel. For example, many Ancient Greek authors would write δ’ ἄλλος (d'állos) for δὲ ἄλλος (dè állos) and ἆρ’ οὐ (âr' ou) for ἆρα οὐ (âra ou).

Initialisms in Hebrew are denoted with a geresh
Geresh
Geresh is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings.#An apostrophe-like sign placed after a letter :...

, often typed as an apostrophe. A double geresh (״), known by the plural form gershayim
Gershayim
Gershayim , also occasionally grashayim , names two distinct typographical marks in the Hebrew language. The name literally means "double geresh".-Punctuation mark:...

, is used to denote acronyms; it is inserted before (i.e., to the right of) the last letter of the acronym.

In Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

, the past tense of verbs beginning with an F or vowel begins with d' (elision of do), for example do oscail becomes d'oscail ("opened") and do fhill becomes d'fhill ("returned"). The copula is is often elided to s, and do ("to"), mo ("my") etc. are elided before f and vowels.
In Ganda, when a word ending with a vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, the final vowel of the first word is elided
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

and the initial vowel of the second word lengthened
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...

in compensation. When the first word is a monosyllable, this elision is represented in the orthography with an apostrophe: in taata w'abaana "the father of the children", wa ("of") becomes w'; in y'ani? ("who is it?"), ye ("who") becomes y'. But the final vowel of a polysyllable is always written, even if it is elided in speech: omusajja oyo ("this man"), not *omusajj'oyo, because omusajja ("man") is a polysyllable.
In Norwegian, the apostrophe marks that a word has been contracted, such as "ha'kke" from "har ikke" (have not). Unlike English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, such elisions are not accepted as part of standardised orthography but used to create a more "oral style" in writing. The apostrophe is also used to mark the genitive for words that end in an -s sound: words ending in -s, -x, and -z, some speakers also including words ending in the sound ʃ. (As Norwegian forms the plural without -s, there is no need, unlike English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, to distinguish between the -s forming the genitive and the -s forming the plural.) Usually the genitive is created by adding an -s to a word, so that "mann" (man) manns (man's). If the word already ends in an s, instead of adding in s, an apostrophe is added: los (naval pilot) los' (naval pilot's). Former American Presidents George Bush
George Bush
George Bush most often refers to:*George H. W. Bush , 41st President of the United States *George W. Bush , 43rd President of the United States , eldest son of George H. W...

could be seen having the dual genitives Bushs and Bush'.
Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

uses the apostrophe to mark elision of the definite article yr ("the") following a vowel (a, e, i, o, u, y, w in Welsh), such as i'r tŷ "to the house". It is also used with the particle yn, such as with mae hi'n "she is".

To separate morphemes

Some languages use the apostrophe to separate the root

Root (linguistics)

The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....

of a word and its affix

Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...

es, especially if the root is foreign and unassimilated. (For another kind of morphemic separation see pinyin, below.)

In Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

an apostrophe is sometimes used to join the enclitic definite article
Definite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...

to words of foreign origin, or to other words that would otherwise look awkward. For example, one would write IP'en to mean "the IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...

". There is some variation in what is considered "awkward enough" to warrant an apostrophe; for instance, long-established words such as firma ("company") or niveau ("level") might be written firma'et and niveau'et, but will generally be seen without an apostrophe. Due to Danish influence, this usage of the apostrophe can also be seen in Norwegian, but is incorrect – a hyphen should be used instead: e.g. CD-en (the CD).
In Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, apostrophes are used in the declension of foreign names or loan words that end in a consonant when written but are pronounced with a vowel ending, e.g. show'ssa ("in a show"), Bordeaux'hun ("to Bordeaux"). For Finnish as well as Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, there is a closely related use of the colon.
In Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...

, apostrophes can be used in the declension of some foreign names to separate the stem from any declension
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

endings; e.g., Monet' (genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

) or Monet'sse (illative case
Illative case
Illative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"...

) of Monet (name of the famous painter).
In Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, the apostrophe is used exclusively for marking inflections of words and word-like elements (but not acronyms – a hyphen is used instead) whose spelling conflicts with the normal rules of inflection. This mainly affects foreign words and names. For instance, one would correctly write Kampania Ala Gore'a for "Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

's campaign". In this example, Ala is spelt without an apostrophe, since its spelling and pronunciation fit into normal Polish rules; but Gore'a needs the apostrophe, because e disappears from the pronunciation, changing the inflection pattern. This rule is often misunderstood as calling for an apostrophe after all foreign words, regardless of their pronunciation, yielding the incorrect Kampania Al'a Gore'a, for example. The effect is akin to the greengrocers' apostrophe (see above).
In Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

, proper nouns are capitalized and an apostrophe is inserted between the noun and any following suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

, e.g. İstanbul'da ("in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

"), contrasting with okulda ("in school").
In Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

the apostrophe is used with infixed pronouns in order to distinguish them from the preceding word (e.g. a'm chwaer "and my sister" as opposed to am chwaer "about a sister").

As a mark of palatalization or non-palatalization

Some languages and transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

systems use the apostrophe to mark the presence, or the lack of, palatalization

Palatalization

In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....

In Belarusian
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...

and Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

, the apostrophe is used between a consonant and a following "soft" (iotified
Iotation
Iotation is a linguistic phenomenon very characteristic of the Slavic languages. It should not be confused with palatalization, which is an entirely different process....

) vowel (е, ё, ю, я; Uk. є, ї, 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. It therefore marks a morpheme boundary before /j/, and in Ukrainian, is also occasionally as a "quasi letter". It appears frequently in Ukrainian, as, for instance, in the words: <п'ять> [p"jat'] 'five', <від'їзд> [vid'jizd] 'departure', <об'єднаний> [ob'jednanyj] 'united', <з'ясувати> [z'jasuvaty] 'to clear up, explain', <п'єса> [p'jesa] play (drama), etc.
In Russian and some derived alphabets the same function is served by the hard sign (ъ, formerly called yer). But the apostrophe saw some use as a substitute after 1918, when Soviet authorities enforced an orthographic reform by confiscating type bearing that "letter parasite" from stubborn printing houses in Petrograd.
In some Latin transliterations of certain variants of the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

(for Belarusian
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...

, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, and Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

), the apostrophe is used to replace the soft sign
Soft sign
The soft sign , also known as yer, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer, the vowel phoneme it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels...

(ь, indicating palatalization of the preceding consonant), e.g., Русь is transliterated Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

according to the BGN/PCGN system. (The prime symbol is also used for the same purpose.) Some of these transliteration schemes use a double apostrophe ( " ) to represent the apostrophe in Ukrainian and Belarusian text, e.g. Ukrainian слов’янське ("Slavic") is transliterated as slov"yans’ke.
Some Karelian
Karelian language
Karelian language is a Finnic language spoken mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Linguistically Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland and some Finnish linguists even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish...

orthographies use an apostrophe to indicate palatalization, e.g. n'evvuo ("to give advice"), d'uuri ("just (like)"), el'vüttiä ("to revive").

As a glottal stop

Other languages and transliteration systems use the apostrophe or some similar mark to indicate a glottal stop

Glottal stop

, sometimes considering it a letter of the alphabet:

In Võro
Võro language
The Võro language is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Traditionally it has been considered a dialect of the South Estonian dialect group of the Estonian language, but nowadays it has its own literary language and is in search of official recognition as an...

, the apostrophe is used in parallel with the letter "q" as symbol of plural.
Guarani
Guaraní language
Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...

, where it is called puso /puˈso/, as in the words ñe'ẽ (language, to speak), ka'a (grass), a'ỹ (sterile).

Hawaiian

Hawaiian language

The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...

, the
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{{Redirect|Apostrophes|the music book|Apostrophes: A Book of Tributes to Masters of Music}}
{{Other uses}}

{{Punctuation marks|’ '}}

The apostrophe ( ’ , often rendered as ' ) is a punctuation
Punctuation
Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...

mark, and sometimes a diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

or certain other alphabets. In English, it serves three purposes:

The marking of the omission of one or more letters (as in the contraction
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

of do not to don't).

The marking of possessive case
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

(as in the cat's whiskers).

The marking as plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

of written items that are not word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...

s established in English orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

(as in P's and Q's, the late 1950's). (This is considered incorrect by some; see Use in forming certain plurals. The use of the apostrophe to form plurals of proper words, as in apple's, banana's, etc., is universally considered incorrect.)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

(OED), the word comes ultimately from Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

{{Polytonic|ἡ ἀπόστροφος [προσῳδία]}} ({{lang|grc-Latn|hē apóstrophos [prosōidía]}}, "[the accent of] 'turning away', or elision"), through Latin and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

.

The apostrophe is different from the closing single quotation mark
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...

(usually rendered identically but serving a different purpose), from the similar-looking prime
Prime (symbol)
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , and triple prime symbol , etc., are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics...

( ′ ), which is used to indicate measurement in feet or arcminutes, as well as for various mathematical purposes, and from the [[ʻokina]] ( {{okina}} ), which represents a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

in Polynesian languages.

Historical development

The apostrophe was introduced into English in the sixteenth century in imitation of French practice.

French practice

Introduced by Geoffroy Tory
Geoffroy Tory
Geoffroy Tory, born in Bourges around 1480 and died in Paris before 14 October 1533, was a French humanist and an engraver, best known for adding written letters in French. His life's work has heavily influenced French publishing to this day.-Biography:...

(1530), the apostrophe was used in place of a vowel letter to indicate elision (as in l'heure in place of la heure). It was frequently used in place of letter e when no actual vowel sound was elided (as in un' heure). Modern French orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

has restored the spelling une heure.

Early English practice

From the sixteenth century, following French practice, the apostrophe was used when a vowel letter was omitted either because of elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

(as is in I'm in place of I am) or because the letter no longer represented a sound (as in lov'd in place of loved). English spelling retained many inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

s which were often not pronounced as syllables, notably verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

es -est, -eth, -es, -ed and noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

-es representing either plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

s or possessives
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

(also known as genitives
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

). Thus, apostrophe followed by s was often used to mark plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

, especially when the noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

was a loan word (as in the two comma's).

Standardisation

The use for elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

has continued to the present day, but significant changes have been made to the possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

and plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

uses. By the 18th century, apostrophe + s was regularly used for all possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

singular
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

forms, even when the letter e was not omitted (as in the gate's height). This was regarded as representing the Old English genitive singular inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

-es. The plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

use was greatly reduced, but a need was felt to mark possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

. The solution was to use an apostrophe after the plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

s (as in girls' dresses). However, this was not universally accepted until the mid nineteenth century.

Possessive apostrophe

{{See also|Saxon genitive}}

An apostrophe is used in English to indicate possession
Possession (linguistics)
Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses the referent of the other ....

. The practice ultimately derives from the Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...

genitive case: the "of" case, itself used as a possessive in many languages.{{Clarify| reason = How can the Old English genitive case be used in "many languages"?|date=June 2011}} The genitive form of many nouns ended with the inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

-es, which evolved into a simple -s for the possessive ending. An apostrophe was later added to replace the omitted e (not an omitted his as is often believed).{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}}

General principles for the possessive apostrophe

Summary of rules for most situations{{anchor|Summary of rules for most situations}}

Possessive personal pronouns, serving as either noun-equivalents or adjective-equivalents, do not use an apostrophe, even when they end in s. The complete list of those ending in the letter s or the corresponding sound /s/ or /z/ but not taking an apostrophe is ours, yours, his, hers, its, theirs, and whose.

Other pronouns, singular nouns not ending in s, and plural nouns not ending in s all take s in the possessive: e.g., someone's, a cat's toys, women's.

Plural nouns already ending in s take only an apostrophe after the pre-existing s when the possessive is formed: e.g., three cats' toys.

Basic rule (singular nouns){{anchor|Basic rule (singular nouns)}}

For most singular nouns the ending 's is added; e.g., the cat's whiskers.

If a singular noun ends with an s-sound (spelled with -s, -se, for example), practice varies as to whether to add {{'s}} or the apostrophe alone. A widely accepted practice is to follow whichever spoken form is judged better: the boss's shoes, Mrs Jones' hat (or Mrs Jones's hat, if that spoken form is preferred). In many cases, both spoken and written forms differ between writers. (See details below.)

{{anchor|Plural possessive}}
Basic rule (plural nouns){{anchor|Basic rule (plural nouns)}}
When the noun is a normal plural, with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive; so pens' caps (where there is more than one pen) is correct rather than pens's caps.

If the plural is not one that is formed by adding s, an s is added for the possessive, after the apostrophe: children's hats, women's hairdresser, some people's eyes (but compare some peoples' recent emergence into nationhood, where peoples is meant as the plural of the singular people). These principles are universally accepted.

A few English nouns have plurals that are not spelled with a final s but end in an /s/ or a /z/ sound: mice (plural of mouse, and for compounds like dormouse
Dormouse
Dormice are rodents of the family Gliridae. Dormice are mostly found in Europe, although some live in Africa and Asia. They are particularly known for their long periods of hibernation...

, titmouse
Titmouse
The tits, chickadees, and titmice constitute Paridae, a large family of small passerine birds which occur in the northern hemisphere and Africa...

), dice
Dice
A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

(when used as the plural of die), pence (a plural of penny, with compounds like sixpence that now tend to be taken as singulars). In the absence of specific exceptional treatment in style guides, the possessives of these plurals are formed by adding an apostrophe and an s in the standard way: seven titmice's tails were found, the dice's last fall was a seven, his few pence's value was not enough to buy bread. These would often be rephrased, where possible: the last fall of the dice was a seven.

Basic rule (compound nouns){{anchor|Basic rule (compound nouns)}}
Compound nouns have their singular possessives formed with an apostrophe and an added s, in accordance with the rules given above: the Attorney-General's husband; the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports
Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports
The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports is a ceremonial official in the United Kingdom. The post dates from at least the 12th century but may be older. The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was originally in charge of the Cinque Ports, a group of five port towns on the southeast coast of England...

' prerogative; this Minister for Justice's intervention; her father-in-law's new wife.

In such examples, the plurals are formed with an s that does not occur at the end: e.g., attorneys-general. A problem therefore arises with the possessive plurals of these compounds. Sources that rule on the matter appear to favour the following forms, in which there is both an s added to form the plural, and a separate s added for the possessive: the attorneys-general's husbands; successive Ministers for Justice's interventions; their fathers-in-law's new wives. Because these constructions stretch the resources of punctuation beyond comfort, in practice they are normally reworded: interventions by successive Ministers for Justice.

Joint and separate possession
A distinction is made between joint possession (Jason and Sue's e-mails: the e-mails of both Jason and Sue), and separate possession (Jason's and Sue's e-mails: both the e-mails of Jason and the e-mails of Sue). Style guides differ only in how much detail they provide concerning these. Their consensus is that if possession is joint, only the last possessor has possessive inflection; in separate possession all the possessors have possessive inflection. If, however, any of the possessors is indicated by a pronoun, then for both joint and separate possession all of the possessors have possessive inflection (his and her e-mails; his, her, and Anthea's e-mails; Jason's and her e-mails; His and Sue's e-mails; His and Sue's wedding; His and Sue's weddings).

Note that in cases of joint possession, the above rule does not distinguish between a situation in which only one or more jointly possessed items perform a grammatical role and a situation in which both one or more such items and a non-possessing entity independently perform that role. Although verb number suffices in some cases ("Jason and Sue's dog has porphyria") and context suffices in others ("Jason and Sue's e-mails rarely exceed 200 characters in length"), number and grammatical position often prevent a resolution of ambiguity:

Where multiple items are possessed and context is not dispositive, a rule forbidding distribution of the possessive merely shifts ambiguity: suppose that Jason and Sue had one or more children who died in a car crash and that none of Jason's children by anyone other than Sue were killed. Under a rule forbidding distribution of the joint possessive, writing "Jason and Sue's children [rather than "Jason's and Sue's children"] died in the crash" eliminates the implication that Jason lost children of whom Sue was not the mother, but it introduces ambiguity as to whether Jason himself was killed.

Moreover, if only one item is possessed, the rule against distribution of the joint possessive introduces ambiguity (unless the context
Context (language use)
Context is a notion used in the language sciences in two different ways, namely as* verbal context* social context- Verbal context :...

happens to resolve it): read in light of a rule requiring distribution, the sentence "Jason and Sue's dog died after being hit by a bus" makes clear that the dog belonged to Sue alone and that Jason survived or was not involved, whereas a rule prohibiting distribution forces ambiguity as to both whether Jason (co-)owned the dog and whether he was killed.

With other punctuation; compounds with pronouns{{anchor|With other punctuation; compounds with pronouns}}
If the word or compound includes, or even ends with, a punctuation mark, an apostrophe and an s are still added in the usual way: "Westward Ho!
Westward Ho!
Westward Ho! is a seaside village near Bideford in Devon, England. The A39 road provides access from the towns of Barnstaple, Bideford and Bude...

's railway station;" Awaye!'s Paulette Whitten recorded Bob Wilson's story; Washington, D.C.'s museums, assuming that the prevailing style requires full stops in D.C.

If the word or compound already includes a possessive apostrophe, a double possessive results: Tom's sisters' careers; the head of marketing's husband's preference; the master of foxhounds'
Fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...

best dog's death. Some style guides, while allowing that these constructions are possible, advise rephrasing: the preference of the head of marketing's husband. If an original apostrophe, or apostrophe with s, occurs at the end, it is left by itself to do double duty: Our employees are better paid than McDonald's employees; Standard & Poor's indexes are widely used; the 5uu's first album (the fixed forms of McDonald's
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

and Standard & Poor's
Standard & Poor's
Standard & Poor's is a United States-based financial services company. It is a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks and bonds. It is well known for its stock-market indices, the US-based S&P 500, the Australian S&P/ASX 200, the Canadian...

already include possessive apostrophes; 5uu's
5uu's
The 5uu's were an American avant-rock group founded in Los Angeles, California in 1984 by drummer-composer Dave Kerman. The group released their first album in 1986 and recorded a second in 1988 with Motor Totemist Guild, a similar band from the area. The two groups merged in 1988 to form U Totem...

already has a non-possessive apostrophe before its final s). For similar cases involving geographical names, see below.

By extended application of the principles stated above, the possessives of all phrases whose wording is fixed are formed in the same way:

"Us and Them"'s inclusion on the album The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in March 1973. It built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings and live shows, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure...

You Am I
You Am I
You Am I are an Australian alternative rock band, fronted by vocalist/guitarist and main songwriter Tim Rogers. They were the first Australian band to have three albums successively debut at #1 on the ARIA Charts, and are renowned for their live performances.-History:Tim Rogers formed the first...

's latest CD

The 69'ers
The 69'ers
The 69'ers were a well known Australian rock/pop/jug/country band formed in Sydney in 1969. They released two albums and a number of singles. As well they toured extensively in Australia and appeared at the Sunbury Rock Festival in 1973 and 1974...

' drummer, Tom Callaghan (only the second apostrophe is possessive)

His 'n' Hers
His 'n' Hers
His 'n' Hers is the fourth studio album by Pulp and is commonly cited as the band's breakthrough album, reaching #9 in the UK charts. In 1998, Q magazine readers voted it the 70th greatest album of all time. A "deluxe edition" of His 'n' Hers was released on 11 September 2006. It contained a second...

' first track is called "Joyriders".

Was She
She (novel)
She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is a novel by Henry Rider Haggard, first serialized in The Graphic magazine from October 1886 to January 1887. She is one of the classics of imaginative literature, and with over 83 million copies sold in 44 different languages, one of the best-selling books...

{{'s}} success greater, or King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party...

{{'}}?

For complications with foreign phrases and titles, see below.

Time, money, and similar{{anchor|Time, money, and similar}}
An apostrophe is used in time and money references, among others, in constructions such as one hour's respite, two weeks' holiday, a dollar's worth, five pounds' worth, one mile's drive from here. This is like an ordinary possessive use. For example, one hour's respite means a respite of one hour (exactly as the cat's whiskers means the whiskers of the cat). Exceptions are accounted for in the same way: three months pregnant (in modern usage, we do not say pregnant of three months, nor one month(')s pregnant).

Possessive pronouns and adjectives{{anchor|Possessive pronouns and adjectives}}
No apostrophe is used in the following possessive pronouns and adjectives: yours, his, hers, ours, its, theirs, and whose.

The possessive of it was originally it's, and many people continue to write it this way, though the apostrophe was dropped in the early 1800s and authorities are now unanimous that it's can be only a contraction of it is or it has. For example, US President Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

used it's as a possessive in his instructions dated 20 June 1803 to Lewis for his preparations for his great expedition.

All other possessive pronouns ending in s do take an apostrophe: one's; everyone's; somebody's, nobody else's, etc. With plural forms, the apostrophe follows the s, as with nouns: the others' husbands (but compare They all looked at each other's husbands, in which both each and other are singular).

Importance for disambiguation{{anchor|Importance for disambiguation}}
Each of these four phrases (listed in Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...

's The Language Instinct
The Language Instinct
The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...

) has a distinct meaning:

My sister's friend's investments (the investments belonging to a friend of my sister)

My sister's friends' investments (the investments belonging to several friends of my sister)

My sisters' friend's investments (the investments belonging to a friend of several of my sisters)

My sisters' friends' investments (the investments belonging to several friends of several of my sisters)

Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

, on being challenged to produce a sentence whose meaning depended on a possessive apostrophe, came up with:

Those things over there are my husband's. (Those things over there belong to my husband.)

Those things over there are my husbands'. (Those things over there belong to several husbands of mine.)

Those things over there are my husbands. (I'm married to those men over there.)

Singular nouns ending with an "s" or "z" sound

This subsection deals with singular nouns pronounced with a sibilant sound at the end: /s/ or /z/. The spelling of these ends with -s, -se, -z, -ze, -ce, -x, or -xe.

Many respected authorities recommend that practically all singular nouns, including those ending with a sibilant sound, have possessive forms with an extra s after the apostrophe so that the spelling reflects the underlying pronunciation. Examples include Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

, the Modern Language Association, and The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

. Such authorities demand possessive singulars like these: Senator Jones's umbrella; Mephistopheles's cat. However, some contemporary writers still follow the older practice of omitting the extra s in all cases ending with a sibilant, but usually not when written -x or -xe. Some contemporary authorities such as the Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...

recommend or allow the practice of omitting the extra "s" in all words ending with an "s", but not in words ending with other sibilants ("z" and "x"). The 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style still recommended the traditional practice, which included providing for several exceptions to accommodate spoken usage such as the omission of the extra s after a polysyllabic word ending in a sibilant. The 16th edition of CMOS no longer recommends omitting the extra "s".
Rules that modify or extend the standard principle have included the following:

If the singular possessive is difficult or awkward to pronounce with an added sibilant, do not add an extra s; these exceptions are supported by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

and The American Heritage
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is an American dictionary of the English language published by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969...

Book of English Usage. Such sources permit possessive singulars like these: Socrates' later suggestion; James's house, or James' house, depending on which pronunciation is intended.

Classical, biblical, and similar names ending in a sibilant, especially if they are polysyllabic, do not take an added s in the possessive; among sources giving exceptions of this kind are The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

and The Elements of Style, which make general stipulations, and Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...

, which mentions only Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

and Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

. As a particular case, Jesus' is very commonly written instead of Jesus's – even by people who would otherwise add 's in, for example, James's or Chris's. Jesus' is referred to as "an accepted liturgical archaism" in Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford was an authoritative reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press...

.

Similar examples of notable names ending in an s that are often given a possessive apostrophe with no additional s include Dickens and Williams. There is often a policy of leaving off the additional s on any such name, but this can prove problematic when specific names are contradictory (for example, St James' Park
St James' Park
St James' Park, known for sponsorship reasons as the Sports Direct Arena, is an all-seater stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It is the home of Newcastle United Football Club and is the sixth largest football stadium in the United Kingdom with a capacity of between 52,387 and 52,409.St James'...

in Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

[the football ground] and the area of St. James's Park
St. James's Park
St. James's Park is a 23 hectare park in the City of Westminster, central London - the oldest of the Royal Parks of London. The park lies at the southernmost tip of the St. James's area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St. James the Less.- Geographical location :St. James's...

in London). For more details on practice with geographic names, see the relevant section below.

Some writers like to reflect standard spoken practice in cases like these with sake: for convenience' sake, for goodness' sake, for appearance' sake, for compromise' sake, etc. This punctuation is preferred in major style guides. Others prefer to add 's: for convenience's sake. Still others prefer to omit the apostrophe when there is an s sound before sake: for morality's sake, but for convenience sake.

Nouns ending with silent "s", "x" or "z"

The English possessive of French nouns ending in a silent s, x, or z is rendered differently by different authorities. Some prefer Descartes' and Dumas', while others insist on Descartes's and Dumas's. Certainly a sibilant is pronounced in these cases; the theoretical question is whether the existing final letter is sounded or whether s needs to be added. Similar examples with x or z: Sauce Périgueux's main ingredient is truffle; His pince-nez
Pince-nez
Pince-nez are a style of spectacles, popular in the 19th century, which are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from French pincer, to pinch, and nez, nose....

's loss went unnoticed; "Verreaux('s) eagle, a large, predominantly black eagle, Aquila verreauxi,..." (OED, entry for "Verreaux", with silent x; see Verreaux's eagle
Verreaux's Eagle
Verreaux's Eagle , alternatively known as the Black Eagle , is a large bird of prey. This eagle lives in hilly and mountaineous regions of southern and eastern Africa , and very locally in Western Asia.- Description :It is long. Males weigh and females weigh...

); in each of these some writers might omit the added s. The same principles and residual uncertainties apply with "naturalised" English words, like Illinois and Arkansas.

For possessive plurals of words ending in silent x, z or s, the few authorities that address the issue at all typically call for an added s and require that the apostrophe precede the s: The Loucheux's homeland is in the Yukon; Compare the two Dumas's literary achievements. The possessive of a cited French title with a silent plural ending is uncertain: "Trois femmes's long and complicated publication history", but "Les noces' singular effect was 'exotic primitive'..." (with nearby sibilants -ce- in noces and s- in singular). Compare treatment of other titles, above.

Guides typically seek a principle that will yield uniformity, even for foreign words that fit awkwardly with standard English punctuation.

Possessives in geographic names

Place names in the United States generally do not use the possessive apostrophe on federal maps and signs. The United States Board on Geographic Names
United States Board on Geographic Names
The United States Board on Geographic Names is a United States federal body whose purpose is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the U.S. government.-Overview:...

, which has responsibility for formal naming of municipalities and geographic features, has deprecated the use of possessive apostrophes since 1890 so as not to show ownership of the place. Only five names of natural features in the U.S. are officially spelled with a genitive apostrophe (one example being Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....

). "

On the other hand, the United Kingdom has Bishop's Stortford
Bishop's Stortford
Bishop's Stortford is a historic market town and civil parish in the district of East Hertfordshire in the county of Hertfordshire in England. It is situated just west of the M11 motorway, on the county boundary with Essex and is the closest large town to London Stansted Airport and part of the...

, Bishop's Castle
Bishop's Castle
Bishop's Castle is a small market town in Shropshire, England, and formerly its smallest borough. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 1,630. Bishop's Castle is east of the Wales-England border, about north-west of Ludlow and about south-west of Shrewsbury. To the south is Clun...

and King's Lynn
King's Lynn
King's Lynn is a sea port and market town in the ceremonial county of Norfolk in the East of England. It is situated north of London and west of Norwich. The population of the town is 42,800....

(but St Albans
St Albans
St Albans is a city in southern Hertfordshire, England, around north of central London, which forms the main urban area of the City and District of St Albans. It is a historic market town, and is now a sought-after dormitory town within the London commuter belt...

, St Andrews
St Andrews
St Andrews is a university town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle.St Andrews has a population of 16,680, making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....

and St Helens
St Helens, Merseyside
St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England. It is the largest settlement and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens with a population of just over 100,000, part of an urban area with a total population of 176,843 at the time of the 2001 Census...

possibly because their names date to before the use was formalised{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}) and, while Newcastle United
Newcastle United F.C.
Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional association football club based in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End, and has played at its current home ground, St James' Park, since the merger...

play at St James' Park
St James' Park
St James' Park, known for sponsorship reasons as the Sports Direct Arena, is an all-seater stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It is the home of Newcastle United Football Club and is the sixth largest football stadium in the United Kingdom with a capacity of between 52,387 and 52,409.St James'...

, and Exeter City at St James Park, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

has a St James's Park (this whole area of London is named after St James's Church, Piccadilly
St James's Church, Piccadilly
St James’s Church, Piccadilly is an Anglican church on Piccadilly in the centre of London, UK. It was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren....

). The special circumstances of the latter case may be this: 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. This could be regarded{{Who|date=August 2011}} as an example of a double genitive: it refers to the park of the church of St James.

Omission of the apostrophe in geographical names is becoming standard in some English-speaking countries, including Australia. Modern usage has been influenced by considerations of technological convenience including the economy of typewriter ribbons and films, and similar computer character "disallowance" which tend to ignore traditional canons of correctness. Practice in the United Kingdom and Canada is not so uniform.

Possessives in names of organizations

Sometimes the apostrophe is omitted in the names of clubs, societies, and other organizations, even though the standard principles seem to require it: Country Women's Association
Country Women's Association
The Country Women’s Association of Australia is the largest women's organisation in Australia. It has 44,000 members across 1855 branches. Its aims are to improve the conditions for country women and children and to try to make life better for women and their families, especially those women...

, but International Aviation {{sic|Wom|ens|hide=yes}} Association; Magistrates' Court of Victoria
Magistrates' Court of Victoria
The Magistrates' Court of Victoria is the lowest court in the Victorian court system, with the County Court of Victoria and the Supreme Court of Victoria respectively judicially higher...

, but Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union
Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union
The Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union was an Australian trade union that covered "mostly work associated with chipping, painting, scrubbing, cleaning, working in every size of tanks, cleaning boilers, docking and undocking vessels, and rigging work"...

. Usage is variable and inconsistent. Style guides typically advise consulting an official source for the standard form of the name; some tend towards greater prescriptiveness, for or against such an apostrophe. As the case of {{sic|wom|ens|hide=yes}} shows, it is not possible to analyze these forms simply as non-possessive plurals, since women is the only correct plural form of woman.

Possessives in business names

{{See also|S-form}}
Where a business name is based on a family name it should take an apostrophe, but many leave it out (contrast Sainsbury's with Harrods
Harrods
Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...

). In recent times there has been an increasing tendency to drop the apostrophe. Names based on a first name are more likely to take an apostrophe (Joe's Crab Shack). Some business names may inadvertently spell a different name if the name with an s at the end is also a name, such as Parson.
A small activist group called the Apostrophe Protection Society
Apostrophe Protection Society
The Apostrophe Protection Society is a UK society that has "the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark"...

has campaigned for large retailers such as Harrods, Currys
Currys
Currys is an electrical retailer in the United Kingdom and Ireland and is owned by Dixons Retail plc. It specialises in selling home electronics and household appliances, with 295 superstores and 73 high street stores...

, and Selfridges
Selfridges
Selfridges, AKA Selfridges & Co, is a chain of high end department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK and was opened on 15 March 1909.More recently, three other stores have been...

to reinstate their missing punctuation. A spokesperson for Barclays PLC
Barclays plc
Barclays PLC is a global banking and financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. As of 2010 it was the world's 10th-largest banking and financial services group and 21st-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine...

stated, "It has just disappeared over the years. Barclays is no longer associated with the family name." Further confusion can be caused by businesses whose names tend to look like they are pronounced differently without an apostrophe such as Paulos Circus, and other companies that leave the apostrophe out of their logos but include it in written text, such as Waterstone's
Waterstone's
Waterstone's is a British book specialist established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone that employs around 4,500 staff throughout the United Kingdom and Europe....

and Cadwalader's.

Apostrophe showing omission

An apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters, normally letters:

It is used in contractions
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

, such as can't from cannot, it's from it is or it has, and I'll from I will or I shall.

It is used in abbreviation
Abbreviation
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...

s, as gov't for government. It may indicate omitted numbers where the spoken form is also capable of omissions, as {{'}}70s for 1970s representing seventies for nineteen-seventies. In modern usage, apostrophes are generally omitted when letters are removed from the start of a word, particularly for a compound word. For example, it is not common to write {{'}}bus (for omnibus), {{'}}phone (telephone), {{'}}net (Internet). However, if the shortening is unusual, dialectal or archaic, the apostrophe may still be used to mark it (e.g., {{'}}bout for about, {{'}}less for unless, {{'}}twas for it was). Sometimes a misunderstanding of the original form of a word results in an incorrect contraction. A common example: {{'}}til for until, though till is in fact the original form, and until is derived from it.

The spelling fo'c's'le, contracted from the nautical term forecastle, is unusual for having three apostrophes. The spelling bo's'n's (from boatswain's), as in Bo's'n's Mate, also has three apostrophes, two showing omission and one possession. Fo'c's'le may also take a possessive s – as in the fo'c's'le's timbers – giving four apostrophes in one word.

It is sometimes used when the normal form of an inflection seems awkward or unnatural; for example, KO'd rather than KOed (where KO is used as a verb meaning "to knock out"); "a spare pince-nez'd man" (cited in OED, entry for "pince-nez"; pince-nezed is also in citations).

In certain colloquial contexts, an apostrophe's function as possessive or contractive can depend on other punctuation.

We rehearsed for Friday's opening night. (We rehearsed for the opening night on Friday.)

We rehearsed, for Friday's opening night. (We rehearsed because Friday is opening night. "Friday's" here is a contraction of "Friday is.")

Eye dialect
Eye dialect
Eye dialect is the use of non-standard spelling for speech to draw attention to pronunciation. The term was originally coined by George P. Krapp to refer to the literary technique of using non-standard spelling that implies a pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard, such as...

s use apostrophes in creating the effect of a non-standard pronunciation.

Use in forming certain plurals

An apostrophe is used by some writers to form a plural
English plural
In the English language, nouns are inflected for grammatical number —that is, singular or plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed for nouns...

for abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols where adding just s rather than s may leave things ambiguous or inelegant. Some specific cases:

It is generally acceptable to use apostrophes to show plurals of single lower-case letters,{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}} such as be sure to dot your i's and cross your t's. Some style guides would prefer to use a change of font: dot your is and cross your ts.{{Citation needed|date=March 2009}} Some style guides rule that upper case letters need no apostrophe (I got three As in my exams) except when there is a risk of misreading, such as at the start of a sentence: A's are the highest marks achievable in these exams.

For groups of years, the apostrophe at the end may be regarded as unnecessary, since there is no possibility of misreading. For this reason, some style guides prefer 1960s to 1960's (although the latter is noted by at least one source as acceptable in American usage), and 90s or {{'}}90s to 90's or {{'}}90's.

The apostrophe is sometimes used in forming the plural of numbers (for example, 1000's of years); however, as with groups of years, it is unnecessary because there is no possibility of misreading. Most sources are against this usage.{{Citation needed|date=February 2011}}

The apostrophe is often used in plurals of symbols. Again, since there can be no misreading, this is often regarded as incorrect. That page has too many &s and #s on it.{{Citation needed|date=February 2011}}

Use in non-English names

Names that are not strictly native to English sometimes have an apostrophe substituted to represent other characters (see also As a mark of elision, below).

Anglicised versions of Irish surnames often contain an apostrophe after an O, for example O'Doole.

Some Scottish
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...

and Irish
Irish name
A formal Irish-language name consists of a given name and a surname. Surnames in Irish are generally patronymic in etymology, although they are no longer literal patronyms, as Icelandic names are...

surnames use an apostrophe after an M, for example M'Gregor. The apostrophe here may be seen as marking a contraction where the prefix Mc or Mac would normally appear. (In earlier and meticulous current usage, the symbol is actually ‘ – a kind of reversed apostrophe that is sometimes called a turned comma, which eventually came to be written as the letter c, whose shape is similar.){{Citation needed|date=January 2011}}

In science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

, the apostrophe is often used in alien names, sometimes to indicate a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

(for example T'Pau in Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

), but also sometimes simply for decoration.

Use in transliterations

In transliterated
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

foreign words, an apostrophe may be used to separate letters or syllables that otherwise would likely be interpreted incorrectly. For example:

in the Arabic word mus'haf, a transliteration of {{script|Arab|مصحف}}, the syllables are as in mus·haf, not mu·shaf

in the Japanese name Shin'ichi
Shin'ichi
Shin'ichi or Shinichi is a very common masculine Japanese given name. Shin and ichi are separated and it is pronounced .-Possible writings:Different kanji that are pronounced are combined with the kanji for " to give different names:...

, the apostrophe shows that the pronunciation is shi·n·i·chi (hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

{{nihongo2|しんいち}}), where the letters n ({{nihongo2|ん}}) and i ({{nihongo2|い}}) are separate moras
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...

, rather than shi·ni·chi ({{nihongo2|しにち}}).

in the Chinese Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

romanization, when two hanzi are combined to form one word, if the resulting Pinyin representation can be mis-interpreted they should be separated by an apostrophe. For example, 先 (xiān) 西安 (xī'ān).

Furthermore, an apostrophe may be used to indicate a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

in transliterations. For example:

in the Arabic word Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

, a common transliteration of (part of) {{script|Arab|القرآن}} al-qur'ān, the apostrophe corresponds to the letter hamza, one of the letters in the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...

.

Non-standard English use

Failure to observe standard use of the apostrophe is widespread and frequently criticised as incorrect, often generating heated debate. The British founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society
Apostrophe Protection Society
The Apostrophe Protection Society is a UK society that has "the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark"...

earned a 2001 Ig Nobel prize for "efforts to protect, promote and defend the differences between plural and possessive". A 2004 report by OCR
OCR (examination board)
OCR is an examination board that sets examinations and awards qualifications . It is one of England, Wales and Northern Ireland's five main examination boards....

, a British examination board, stated that "the inaccurate use of the apostrophe is so widespread as to be almost universal". A 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use the apostrophe correctly.

{{anchor|Greengrocers' apostrophe}}{{anchor|Greengrocers' apostrophes}} Superfluous apostrophes ("greengrocers' apostrophes")

Apostrophes used in a non-standard manner to form noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

s are known as greengrocers' apostrophes or grocers' apostrophes, often called (spelled) greengrocer's apostrophes and grocer's apostrophes. They are sometimes humorously called greengrocers apostrophe's, rogue apostrophes, or idiot's apostrophes (a literal translation of the German word Deppenapostroph, which criticises the misapplication of apostrophes in Denglisch
Denglisch
Denglisch or Denglish is a portmanteau of the German words Deutsch and Englisch. Used in all German-speaking and Dutch-speaking countries, it describes an influx of English, or pseudo-English, vocabulary into the German or Dutch language through travel and the widespread usage of English in...

). The practice, once common and acceptable (see Historical development), comes from the identical sound of the plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

and possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

forms of most English noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s. It is often criticised as a form of hypercorrection
Hypercorrection
In linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...

coming from a widespread ignorance of the proper use of the apostrophe or of punctuation in general. Lynne Truss
Lynne Truss
Lynne Truss is an English writer and journalist, best known for her popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.-Early life:...

, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and...

, points out that before the 19th century, it was standard orthography to use the apostrophe to form a plural of a foreign-sounding word that ended in a vowel (e.g., banana's, folio's, logo's, quarto's, pasta's, ouzo's) to clarify pronunciation. Truss says this usage is no longer considered proper in formal writing.

The term is believed to have been coined in the middle of the 20th century by a teacher of languages working in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, at a time when such mistakes were common in the handwritten signs and advertisements of greengrocer
Greengrocer
A greengrocer or fruiterer is a retail trader in fruit and vegetables; that is, in green groceries. Greengrocer is primarily a British and Australian term, and greengrocers' shops were once common in suburbs, towns and villages...

s (e.g., Apple's 1/-
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...

a pound, Orange's 1/6d
Penny
A penny is a coin or a type of currency used in several English-speaking countries. It is often the smallest denomination within a currency system.-Etymology:...

a pound). Some have argued that its use in mass communication by employees of well-known companies has led to the less literate assuming it to be correct and adopting the habit themselves.

The same use of apostrophe before noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

-s forms is sometimes made by non-native speakers of English. For example, in Dutch, the apostrophe is inserted before the s when pluralising most words ending in a vowel or y for example, baby's (English babies) and jury's (English juries). This often produces so-called "Dunglish
Dunglish
Dunglish or Dutch English are the mistakes native Dutch speakers make when speaking English....

" errors when carried over into English. Hyperforeignism
Hyperforeignism
A hyperforeignism is a non-standard language form resulting from an unsuccessful attempt to apply the rules of a foreign language to a loan word , or occasionally to a word believed to be a loan word. The result reflects "neither the .....

has been formalised in some pseudo-anglicism
Anglicism
An Anglicism, as most often defined, is a word borrowed from English into another language. "Anglicism" also describes English syntax, grammar, meaning, and structure used in another language with varying degrees of corruption.-Anglicisms in Chinese:...

s. For example, the French word pin's (from English pin) is used (with the apostrophe in both singular and plural) for collectable lapel pin
Lapel pin
A lapel pin is a small pin often worn on the lapel of a dress jacket. Lapel pins can be purely ornamental or can indicate the wearer's affiliation with an organization or cause; for example, American Flag lapel pins became very popular in the United States, especially among politicians, following...

s. Similarly, there is an Andorra
Andorra
Andorra , officially the Principality of Andorra , also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra, , is a small landlocked country in southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe having an area of...

n football club called FC Rànger's
FC Rànger's
FC Rànger's is an Andorran football club, who currently plays in the Andorran First Division.- History :...

(after such British clubs as Rangers F.C.
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland, who play in the Scottish Premier League. The club are nicknamed the Gers, Teddy Bears and the Light Blues, and the fans are known to each other as bluenoses...

), a Japanese dance group called Super Monkey's
Super Monkey's
was an Okinawan pop-singing and dancing group that spawned the careers of Namie Amuro and some members of the girl group, MAX. The group went through several member and name changes before coming into prominence in 1995 with the release of their fifth single, Try Me ~Watashi o Shinjite~.- Pre-debut...

, and a Japanese pop punk
Pop punk
Pop punk is a fusion music genre that combines elements of punk rock with pop music, to varying degrees. Allmusic describes the genre as a strand of alternative rock, which typically merges pop melodies with speedy punk tempos, chord changes and loud guitars...

band called the Titan Go King's.

The widespread use of apostrophes before the s of plural nouns has led some {{Who|date=July 2010}} to believe, incorrectly, that an apostrophe is also needed before the s of the third-person present tense of a verb. Thus, he take's, it begin's, etc.{{Citation needed|date=June 2010}}

Omission

There is a tendency to drop apostrophes in many commonly used names such as St Annes
Lytham St Annes
Lytham St Annes is a conurbation in the Fylde district of Lancashire, England. The neighbouring towns of Lytham and St-Anne's-on-the-Sea have grown together and now form a seaside resort...

, St Johns Lane, and so on.

In 2009, a resident in Royal Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in west Kent, England, about south-east of central London by road, by rail. The town is close to the border of the county of East Sussex...

was accused of vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...

after he painted apostrophes on road signs that had spelt St John's Close as St Johns Close.

UK supermarket chain Tesco
Tesco
Tesco plc is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues and the second-largest measured by profits...

omits the mark where standard practice would require it. Signs in Tesco advertise (among other items) {{typo|"mens magazines", "girls toys", "kids books" and "womens shoes"}}. In his book Troublesome Words
Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words
Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words is a book by Bill Bryson, first released 1984, that catalogues some of the English language's most commonly misused words and phrases in order to demonstrate correct usage....

, author Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson
William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before moving back to the US in 1995...

lambasts Tesco for this, stating that "the mistake is inexcusable, and those who make it are linguistic Neanderthals."

Advocates of greater or lesser use

George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, a proponent of English spelling reform
Spelling reform
Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common....

on phonetic principles, argued that the apostrophe was mostly redundant. He did not use it for spelling cant, hes, etc. in many of his writings. He did however allow I'm and it's. Hubert Selby, Jr.
Hubert Selby, Jr.
Hubert "Cubby" Selby, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His best-known novels are Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream . Both novels were later adapted into films within his lifetime....

used a slash instead of an apostrophe mark for contractions and did not use an apostrophe at all for possessives. Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

made greater use of apostrophes, and frequently used sha'n't, with an apostrophe in place of the elided "ll" as well as the more usual "o". Neither author's use has become widespread.

Other misuses

The British pop group Hear'Say
Hear'Say
Hear'Say were a British manufactured pop group created in February 2001 from the winners of Popstars, an ITV reality TV show based on a New Zealand show of the same name. They enjoyed huge success with their debut single "Pure and Simple", helped by the publicity surrounding Popstars, the first of...

famously made unconventional use of an apostrophe in its name. Truss comments that "the naming of Hear'Say in 2001 was [...] a significant milestone on the road to punctuation anarchy". Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners are a British pop group with soul influences, who achieved their major success in the early to mid 1980s. They are best known for their songs "Come On Eileen" and "Geno", both of which went No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart....

, on the other hand, omit the apostrophe (though "dexys" can be understood as a plural form of "dexy", rather than a possessive form).

An apostrophe wrongly thought to be misused in popular culture occurs in the name of Liverpudlian rock band The La's
The La's
The La's were an English rock band from Liverpool, originally active from the mid-1980s to early 1990s. Fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist Lee Mavers, the group is most famous for their hit single "There She Goes". The band was formed by Mike Badger in 1984 and Mavers joined soon after...

. This apostrophe is often thought to be a mistake; but in fact it marks omission of the letter d. The name comes from the Scouse
Scouse
Scouse is an accent and dialect of English found primarily in the Metropolitan county of Merseyside, and closely associated with the city of Liverpool and the adjoining urban areas such as the boroughs of south Sefton, Knowsley and the Wirral...

slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

for "The Lads".

Criticism

Over the years, the use of apostrophes has been criticized. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

called them "uncouth bacilli". In his book, American Speech, linguist Steven Byington stated of the apostrophe that "the language would be none the worse for its abolition." Adrian Room in his English Journal
English Journal
English Journal is the official publication of the Secondary Education section of the American National Council of Teachers of English...

article "Axing the Apostrophe" argued that apostrophes are unnecessary and context will resolve any ambiguity. Again in an English Journal article, Peter Brodie stated that apostrophes are "largely decorative [and] rarely clarify meaning". Dr. John C. Wells
John C. Wells
John Christopher Wells is a British phonetician and Esperanto teacher. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics....

, Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

, says the apostrophe is "a waste of time". Peter Buck
Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck , is an American rock guitarist who is best known for playing in and co-founding alternative rock band R.E.M....

, guitarist of R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...

, claimed, apparently forgetful of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...

, "We all hate apostrophes. There's never been a good rock album that's had an apostrophe in the title."

As a mark of elision

In many languages, especially European languages, the apostrophe is used to indicate the elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

of one or more sounds, as in English.

In Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

the apostrophe is used to show that letters have been omitted from words. The most common use is in the indefinite article 'n, which is a contraction of een meaning "one" (the number). As the initial e is omitted and cannot be capitalised, if a sentence begins with 'n the second word in the sentence is capitalised. For example: 'n Boom is groen, "A tree is green". In addition, the apostrophe is used for plurals and diminutives where the root ends with certain vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s, e.g. foto's, taxi's, Lulu's, Lulu'tjie, garage's etc.

In Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, apostrophes are sometimes seen on commercial
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

materials. One might commonly see Ta' mig med ("Take me with [you]") next to a stand with advertisement leaflets; that would be written Tag mig med in standard orthography. As in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, the apostrophe must not be used to indicate the possessive, except when there is already an s present in the base form, as in Lukas' bog.

In Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, the apostrophe is used to indicate omitted characters. For example, the indefinite article een can be shortened to 'n, and the definite article het shortened to 't. When this happens in the first word of a sentence, the second word of the sentence is capitalised. In general, this way of using the apostrophe is considered non-standard, except in 's morgens, 's middags, 's avonds, 's nachts (for des morgens, des middags, des avonds, des nachts: "at morning, at afternoon, at evening, at night"). In addition, the apostrophe is used for plurals where the singulars end with certain vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s, e.g. foto's, taxi's; and for the genitive of proper names ending with these vowels, e.g. Anna's, Otto's. These are in fact elided vowels; use of the apostrophe prevents spellings like fotoos and Annaas.

The Fundamento de Esperanto
Fundamento de Esperanto
The Fundamento de Esperanto is a book by L. L. Zamenhof, published in the spring of 1905. On August 9, 1905 it was made the official source for the language by the fourth article of the Declaration of Boulogne at the first World Congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France:It is considered...

limits the elision mark to the definite article l' (from la) and singular nominative nouns (kor' from koro, "heart"). This is mostly confined to poetry. Non-standard dank' al (from danke al, "thanks to") and del' (from de la, "of the") are nonetheless frequent. In-word elision is usually marked with a hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...

, as in D-ro (from doktoro, "Dr"). Some early guides used and advocated the use of apostrophes between word parts, to aid recognition of such compound words as gitar'ist'o, "guitarist".

In Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

and Occitan word sequences such as (coup) d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

, (maître) d'hôtel (often shortened to maître d{{'}}, when used in English), L'Aquila
L'Aquila
L'Aquila is a city and comune in central Italy, both the capital city of the Abruzzo region and of the Province of L'Aquila. , it has a population of 73,150 inhabitants, but has a daily presence in the territory of 100,000 people for study, tertiary activities, jobs and tourism...

and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat or briefly L'Hospitalet is a city to the immediate southwest of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain, and the second largest in Catalonia by population...

the final vowel in the first word (de "of", la "the", etc.) is elided because the word that follows it starts with a vowel or a mute h
H
H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....

. Similarly, French has qu'il instead of que il ("that he"), c'est instead of ce est ("it is or it's"), and so on. Catalan, French, Italian and Occitan surnames sometimes contain apostrophes of elision, e.g. d'Alembert, D'Angelo.

French feminine singular possessive adjectives do not undergo elision, but change to the masculine form instead: ma preceding église becomes mon église ("my church").

In Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

the apostrophe is also used in some few combinations such as caixa-d'água ("water tower"), galinha-d'angola ("Helmeted Guineafowl"), pau-d'alho ("Gallesia integrifolia"), etc. Portuguese has many contractions between prepositions and articles or pronouns (like na for en + a), but these are written without an apostrophe. Portuguese uses a grave accent to indicate an unstressed a has been elided with a following stressed one, so one writes (and says) àquela hora instead of a aquela hora.

Modern Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

no longer uses the apostrophe to indicate elision in standard writing, although it can sometimes be found in older poetry for that purpose. Instead Spanish writes out the spoken elision in full (de enero, mi hijo) except for the contraction del for de + el, which uses no apostrophe. Spanish also switches to the masculine article immediately before a feminine noun beginning with a stressed a instead of writing (or saying) an elision: un águila blanca, el águila blanca, and el agua pura but una/la blanca águila and la pura agua. This reflects the origin of the Spanish definite articles from the Latin demonstratives ille/illa/illum. Although forms with an apostrophe indicating elision, especially m'ijo and mi'ija for mi hijo and mi hija, can be found in informal writing, this is considered nonstandard.

German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

usage is very similar: an apostrophe is used almost exclusively to indicate omitted letters. It must not be used for plurals or most of the possessive forms (Max' Vater [Max's father] being one of very few exceptions); although both usages are widespread, they are deemed incorrect. The German equivalent of greengrocers' apostrophes would be the derogatory Deppenapostroph ("idiots' apostrophe" (See the article Apostrophitis in German Wikipedia).

In modern printings of Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

, apostrophes are also used to mark elision. Certain Ancient Greek words that end in short vowels elide when the next word starts with a vowel. For example, many Ancient Greek authors would write δ’ ἄλλος (d'állos) for δὲ ἄλλος (dè állos) and ἆρ’ οὐ (âr' ou) for ἆρα οὐ (âra ou).

Initialisms in Hebrew are denoted with a geresh
Geresh
Geresh is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings.#An apostrophe-like sign placed after a letter :...

, often typed as an apostrophe. A double geresh (״), known by the plural form gershayim
Gershayim
Gershayim , also occasionally grashayim , names two distinct typographical marks in the Hebrew language. The name literally means "double geresh".-Punctuation mark:...

, is used to denote acronyms; it is inserted before (i.e., to the right of) the last letter of the acronym.

In Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

, the past tense of verbs beginning with an F or vowel begins with d' (elision of do), for example do oscail becomes d'oscail ("opened") and do fhill becomes d'fhill ("returned"). The copula is is often elided to s, and do ("to"), mo ("my") etc. are elided before f and vowels.

In Ganda, when a word ending with a vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, the final vowel of the first word is elided
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

and the initial vowel of the second word lengthened
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...

in compensation. When the first word is a monosyllable, this elision is represented in the orthography with an apostrophe: in taata w'abaana "the father of the children", wa ("of") becomes w'; in y'ani? ("who is it?"), ye ("who") becomes y'. But the final vowel of a polysyllable is always written, even if it is elided in speech: omusajja oyo ("this man"), not *omusajj'oyo, because omusajja ("man") is a polysyllable.

In Norwegian, the apostrophe marks that a word has been contracted, such as "ha'kke" from "har ikke" (have not). Unlike English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, such elisions are not accepted as part of standardised orthography but used to create a more "oral style" in writing. The apostrophe is also used to mark the genitive for words that end in an -s sound: words ending in -s, -x, and -z, some speakers also including words ending in the sound ʃ. (As Norwegian forms the plural without -s, there is no need, unlike English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, to distinguish between the -s forming the genitive and the -s forming the plural.) Usually the genitive is created by adding an -s to a word, so that "mann" (man) manns (man's). If the word already ends in an s, instead of adding in s, an apostrophe is added: los (naval pilot) los' (naval pilot's). Former American Presidents George Bush
George Bush
George Bush most often refers to:*George H. W. Bush , 41st President of the United States *George W. Bush , 43rd President of the United States , eldest son of George H. W...

could be seen having the dual genitives Bushs and Bush'.

Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

uses the apostrophe to mark elision of the definite article yr ("the") following a vowel (a, e, i, o, u, y, w in Welsh), such as i'r tŷ "to the house". It is also used with the particle yn, such as with mae hi'n "she is".

To separate morphemes

Some languages use the apostrophe to separate the root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....

of a word and its affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...

es, especially if the root is foreign and unassimilated. (For another kind of morphemic separation see pinyin, below.)

In Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

an apostrophe is sometimes used to join the enclitic definite article
Definite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...

to words of foreign origin, or to other words that would otherwise look awkward. For example, one would write IP'en to mean "the IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...

". There is some variation in what is considered "awkward enough" to warrant an apostrophe; for instance, long-established words such as firma ("company") or niveau ("level") might be written firma'et and niveau'et, but will generally be seen without an apostrophe. Due to Danish influence, this usage of the apostrophe can also be seen in Norwegian, but is incorrect – a hyphen should be used instead: e.g. CD-en (the CD).

In Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, apostrophes are used in the declension of foreign names or loan words that end in a consonant when written but are pronounced with a vowel ending, e.g. show'ssa ("in a show"), Bordeaux'hun ("to Bordeaux"). For Finnish as well as Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, there is a closely related use of the colon.

In Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...

, apostrophes can be used in the declension of some foreign names to separate the stem from any declension
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

endings; e.g., Monet' (genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

) or Monet'sse (illative case
Illative case
Illative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"...

) of Monet (name of the famous painter).

In Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, the apostrophe is used exclusively for marking inflections of words and word-like elements (but not acronyms – a hyphen is used instead) whose spelling conflicts with the normal rules of inflection. This mainly affects foreign words and names. For instance, one would correctly write Kampania Ala Gore'a for "Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

's campaign". In this example, Ala is spelt without an apostrophe, since its spelling and pronunciation fit into normal Polish rules; but Gore'a needs the apostrophe, because e disappears from the pronunciation, changing the inflection pattern. This rule is often misunderstood as calling for an apostrophe after all foreign words, regardless of their pronunciation, yielding the incorrect Kampania Al'a Gore'a, for example. The effect is akin to the greengrocers' apostrophe (see above).

In Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

, proper nouns are capitalized and an apostrophe is inserted between the noun and any following suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

, e.g. İstanbul'da ("in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

"), contrasting with okulda ("in school").

In Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

the apostrophe is used with infixed pronouns in order to distinguish them from the preceding word (e.g. a'm chwaer "and my sister" as opposed to am chwaer "about a sister").

As a mark of palatalization or non-palatalization

Some languages and transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

systems use the apostrophe to mark the presence, or the lack of, palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....

.

In Belarusian
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...

and Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

, the apostrophe is used between a consonant and a following "soft" (iotified
Iotation
Iotation is a linguistic phenomenon very characteristic of the Slavic languages. It should not be confused with palatalization, which is an entirely different process....

) vowel (е, ё, ю, я; Uk. є, ї, 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. It therefore marks a morpheme boundary before /j/, and in Ukrainian, is also occasionally as a "quasi letter". It appears frequently in Ukrainian, as, for instance, in the words: <п'ять> [p"jat'] 'five', <від'їзд> [vid'jizd] 'departure', <об'єднаний> [ob'jednanyj] 'united', <з'ясувати> [z'jasuvaty] 'to clear up, explain', <п'єса> [p'jesa] play (drama), etc.

In Russian and some derived alphabets the same function is served by the hard sign (ъ, formerly called yer). But the apostrophe saw some use as a substitute after 1918, when Soviet authorities enforced an orthographic reform by confiscating type bearing that "letter parasite" from stubborn printing houses in Petrograd.

In some Latin transliterations of certain variants of the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

(for Belarusian
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...

, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, and Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

), the apostrophe is used to replace the soft sign
Soft sign
The soft sign , also known as yer, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer, the vowel phoneme it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels...

(ь, indicating palatalization of the preceding consonant), e.g., Русь is transliterated Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

according to the BGN/PCGN system. (The prime symbol is also used for the same purpose.) Some of these transliteration schemes use a double apostrophe ( " ) to represent the apostrophe in Ukrainian and Belarusian text, e.g. Ukrainian слов’янське ("Slavic") is transliterated as slov"yans’ke.

Some Karelian
Karelian language
Karelian language is a Finnic language spoken mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Linguistically Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland and some Finnish linguists even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish...

orthographies use an apostrophe to indicate palatalization, e.g. n'evvuo ("to give advice"), d'uuri ("just (like)"), el'vüttiä ("to revive").

As a glottal stop

{{See also|Okina|Saltillo (linguistics)}}

Other languages and transliteration systems use the apostrophe or some similar mark to indicate a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

, sometimes considering it a letter of the alphabet:

In Võro
Võro language
The Võro language is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Traditionally it has been considered a dialect of the South Estonian dialect group of the Estonian language, but nowadays it has its own literary language and is in search of official recognition as an...

, the apostrophe is used in parallel with the letter "q" as symbol of plural.

Guarani
Guaraní language
Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...

, where it is called puso /puˈso/, as in the words ñe'ẽ (language, to speak), ka'a (grass), a'ỹ (sterile).

Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...

, the
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{{Redirect|Apostrophes|the music book|Apostrophes: A Book of Tributes to Masters of Music}}
{{Other uses}}

{{Punctuation marks|’ '}}

The apostrophe ( ’ , often rendered as ' ) is a punctuation
Punctuation
Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...

mark, and sometimes a diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

or certain other alphabets. In English, it serves three purposes:

The marking of the omission of one or more letters (as in the contraction
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

of do not to don't).

The marking of possessive case
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

(as in the cat's whiskers).

The marking as plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

of written items that are not word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...

s established in English orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

(as in P's and Q's, the late 1950's). (This is considered incorrect by some; see Use in forming certain plurals. The use of the apostrophe to form plurals of proper words, as in apple's, banana's, etc., is universally considered incorrect.)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

(OED), the word comes ultimately from Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

{{Polytonic|ἡ ἀπόστροφος [προσῳδία]}} ({{lang|grc-Latn|hē apóstrophos [prosōidía]}}, "[the accent of] 'turning away', or elision"), through Latin and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

.

The apostrophe is different from the closing single quotation mark
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...

(usually rendered identically but serving a different purpose), from the similar-looking prime
Prime (symbol)
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , and triple prime symbol , etc., are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics...

( ′ ), which is used to indicate measurement in feet or arcminutes, as well as for various mathematical purposes, and from the [[ʻokina]] ( {{okina}} ), which represents a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

in Polynesian languages.

Historical development

The apostrophe was introduced into English in the sixteenth century in imitation of French practice.

French practice

Introduced by Geoffroy Tory
Geoffroy Tory
Geoffroy Tory, born in Bourges around 1480 and died in Paris before 14 October 1533, was a French humanist and an engraver, best known for adding written letters in French. His life's work has heavily influenced French publishing to this day.-Biography:...

(1530), the apostrophe was used in place of a vowel letter to indicate elision (as in l'heure in place of la heure). It was frequently used in place of letter e when no actual vowel sound was elided (as in un' heure). Modern French orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

has restored the spelling une heure.

Early English practice

From the sixteenth century, following French practice, the apostrophe was used when a vowel letter was omitted either because of elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

(as is in I'm in place of I am) or because the letter no longer represented a sound (as in lov'd in place of loved). English spelling retained many inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

s which were often not pronounced as syllables, notably verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

es -est, -eth, -es, -ed and noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

-es representing either plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

s or possessives
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

(also known as genitives
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

). Thus, apostrophe followed by s was often used to mark plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

, especially when the noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

was a loan word (as in the two comma's).

Standardisation

The use for elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

has continued to the present day, but significant changes have been made to the possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

and plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

uses. By the 18th century, apostrophe + s was regularly used for all possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

singular
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

forms, even when the letter e was not omitted (as in the gate's height). This was regarded as representing the Old English genitive singular inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

-es. The plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

use was greatly reduced, but a need was felt to mark possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

. The solution was to use an apostrophe after the plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

s (as in girls' dresses). However, this was not universally accepted until the mid nineteenth century.

Possessive apostrophe

{{See also|Saxon genitive}}

An apostrophe is used in English to indicate possession
Possession (linguistics)
Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses the referent of the other ....

. The practice ultimately derives from the Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...

genitive case: the "of" case, itself used as a possessive in many languages.{{Clarify| reason = How can the Old English genitive case be used in "many languages"?|date=June 2011}} The genitive form of many nouns ended with the inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

-es, which evolved into a simple -s for the possessive ending. An apostrophe was later added to replace the omitted e (not an omitted his as is often believed).{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}}

General principles for the possessive apostrophe

Summary of rules for most situations{{anchor|Summary of rules for most situations}}

Possessive personal pronouns, serving as either noun-equivalents or adjective-equivalents, do not use an apostrophe, even when they end in s. The complete list of those ending in the letter s or the corresponding sound /s/ or /z/ but not taking an apostrophe is ours, yours, his, hers, its, theirs, and whose.

Other pronouns, singular nouns not ending in s, and plural nouns not ending in s all take s in the possessive: e.g., someone's, a cat's toys, women's.

Plural nouns already ending in s take only an apostrophe after the pre-existing s when the possessive is formed: e.g., three cats' toys.

Basic rule (singular nouns){{anchor|Basic rule (singular nouns)}}

For most singular nouns the ending 's is added; e.g., the cat's whiskers.

If a singular noun ends with an s-sound (spelled with -s, -se, for example), practice varies as to whether to add {{'s}} or the apostrophe alone. A widely accepted practice is to follow whichever spoken form is judged better: the boss's shoes, Mrs Jones' hat (or Mrs Jones's hat, if that spoken form is preferred). In many cases, both spoken and written forms differ between writers. (See details below.)

{{anchor|Plural possessive}}
Basic rule (plural nouns){{anchor|Basic rule (plural nouns)}}
When the noun is a normal plural, with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive; so pens' caps (where there is more than one pen) is correct rather than pens's caps.

If the plural is not one that is formed by adding s, an s is added for the possessive, after the apostrophe: children's hats, women's hairdresser, some people's eyes (but compare some peoples' recent emergence into nationhood, where peoples is meant as the plural of the singular people). These principles are universally accepted.

A few English nouns have plurals that are not spelled with a final s but end in an /s/ or a /z/ sound: mice (plural of mouse, and for compounds like dormouse
Dormouse
Dormice are rodents of the family Gliridae. Dormice are mostly found in Europe, although some live in Africa and Asia. They are particularly known for their long periods of hibernation...

, titmouse
Titmouse
The tits, chickadees, and titmice constitute Paridae, a large family of small passerine birds which occur in the northern hemisphere and Africa...

), dice
Dice
A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

(when used as the plural of die), pence (a plural of penny, with compounds like sixpence that now tend to be taken as singulars). In the absence of specific exceptional treatment in style guides, the possessives of these plurals are formed by adding an apostrophe and an s in the standard way: seven titmice's tails were found, the dice's last fall was a seven, his few pence's value was not enough to buy bread. These would often be rephrased, where possible: the last fall of the dice was a seven.

Basic rule (compound nouns){{anchor|Basic rule (compound nouns)}}
Compound nouns have their singular possessives formed with an apostrophe and an added s, in accordance with the rules given above: the Attorney-General's husband; the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports
Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports
The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports is a ceremonial official in the United Kingdom. The post dates from at least the 12th century but may be older. The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was originally in charge of the Cinque Ports, a group of five port towns on the southeast coast of England...

' prerogative; this Minister for Justice's intervention; her father-in-law's new wife.

In such examples, the plurals are formed with an s that does not occur at the end: e.g., attorneys-general. A problem therefore arises with the possessive plurals of these compounds. Sources that rule on the matter appear to favour the following forms, in which there is both an s added to form the plural, and a separate s added for the possessive: the attorneys-general's husbands; successive Ministers for Justice's interventions; their fathers-in-law's new wives. Because these constructions stretch the resources of punctuation beyond comfort, in practice they are normally reworded: interventions by successive Ministers for Justice.

Joint and separate possession
A distinction is made between joint possession (Jason and Sue's e-mails: the e-mails of both Jason and Sue), and separate possession (Jason's and Sue's e-mails: both the e-mails of Jason and the e-mails of Sue). Style guides differ only in how much detail they provide concerning these. Their consensus is that if possession is joint, only the last possessor has possessive inflection; in separate possession all the possessors have possessive inflection. If, however, any of the possessors is indicated by a pronoun, then for both joint and separate possession all of the possessors have possessive inflection (his and her e-mails; his, her, and Anthea's e-mails; Jason's and her e-mails; His and Sue's e-mails; His and Sue's wedding; His and Sue's weddings).

Note that in cases of joint possession, the above rule does not distinguish between a situation in which only one or more jointly possessed items perform a grammatical role and a situation in which both one or more such items and a non-possessing entity independently perform that role. Although verb number suffices in some cases ("Jason and Sue's dog has porphyria") and context suffices in others ("Jason and Sue's e-mails rarely exceed 200 characters in length"), number and grammatical position often prevent a resolution of ambiguity:

Where multiple items are possessed and context is not dispositive, a rule forbidding distribution of the possessive merely shifts ambiguity: suppose that Jason and Sue had one or more children who died in a car crash and that none of Jason's children by anyone other than Sue were killed. Under a rule forbidding distribution of the joint possessive, writing "Jason and Sue's children [rather than "Jason's and Sue's children"] died in the crash" eliminates the implication that Jason lost children of whom Sue was not the mother, but it introduces ambiguity as to whether Jason himself was killed.

Moreover, if only one item is possessed, the rule against distribution of the joint possessive introduces ambiguity (unless the context
Context (language use)
Context is a notion used in the language sciences in two different ways, namely as* verbal context* social context- Verbal context :...

happens to resolve it): read in light of a rule requiring distribution, the sentence "Jason and Sue's dog died after being hit by a bus" makes clear that the dog belonged to Sue alone and that Jason survived or was not involved, whereas a rule prohibiting distribution forces ambiguity as to both whether Jason (co-)owned the dog and whether he was killed.

With other punctuation; compounds with pronouns{{anchor|With other punctuation; compounds with pronouns}}
If the word or compound includes, or even ends with, a punctuation mark, an apostrophe and an s are still added in the usual way: "Westward Ho!
Westward Ho!
Westward Ho! is a seaside village near Bideford in Devon, England. The A39 road provides access from the towns of Barnstaple, Bideford and Bude...

's railway station;" Awaye!'s Paulette Whitten recorded Bob Wilson's story; Washington, D.C.'s museums, assuming that the prevailing style requires full stops in D.C.

If the word or compound already includes a possessive apostrophe, a double possessive results: Tom's sisters' careers; the head of marketing's husband's preference; the master of foxhounds'
Fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...

best dog's death. Some style guides, while allowing that these constructions are possible, advise rephrasing: the preference of the head of marketing's husband. If an original apostrophe, or apostrophe with s, occurs at the end, it is left by itself to do double duty: Our employees are better paid than McDonald's employees; Standard & Poor's indexes are widely used; the 5uu's first album (the fixed forms of McDonald's
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

and Standard & Poor's
Standard & Poor's
Standard & Poor's is a United States-based financial services company. It is a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks and bonds. It is well known for its stock-market indices, the US-based S&P 500, the Australian S&P/ASX 200, the Canadian...

already include possessive apostrophes; 5uu's
5uu's
The 5uu's were an American avant-rock group founded in Los Angeles, California in 1984 by drummer-composer Dave Kerman. The group released their first album in 1986 and recorded a second in 1988 with Motor Totemist Guild, a similar band from the area. The two groups merged in 1988 to form U Totem...

already has a non-possessive apostrophe before its final s). For similar cases involving geographical names, see below.

By extended application of the principles stated above, the possessives of all phrases whose wording is fixed are formed in the same way:

"Us and Them"'s inclusion on the album The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in March 1973. It built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings and live shows, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure...

You Am I
You Am I
You Am I are an Australian alternative rock band, fronted by vocalist/guitarist and main songwriter Tim Rogers. They were the first Australian band to have three albums successively debut at #1 on the ARIA Charts, and are renowned for their live performances.-History:Tim Rogers formed the first...

's latest CD

The 69'ers
The 69'ers
The 69'ers were a well known Australian rock/pop/jug/country band formed in Sydney in 1969. They released two albums and a number of singles. As well they toured extensively in Australia and appeared at the Sunbury Rock Festival in 1973 and 1974...

' drummer, Tom Callaghan (only the second apostrophe is possessive)

His 'n' Hers
His 'n' Hers
His 'n' Hers is the fourth studio album by Pulp and is commonly cited as the band's breakthrough album, reaching #9 in the UK charts. In 1998, Q magazine readers voted it the 70th greatest album of all time. A "deluxe edition" of His 'n' Hers was released on 11 September 2006. It contained a second...

' first track is called "Joyriders".

Was She
She (novel)
She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is a novel by Henry Rider Haggard, first serialized in The Graphic magazine from October 1886 to January 1887. She is one of the classics of imaginative literature, and with over 83 million copies sold in 44 different languages, one of the best-selling books...

{{'s}} success greater, or King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party...

{{'}}?

For complications with foreign phrases and titles, see below.

Time, money, and similar{{anchor|Time, money, and similar}}
An apostrophe is used in time and money references, among others, in constructions such as one hour's respite, two weeks' holiday, a dollar's worth, five pounds' worth, one mile's drive from here. This is like an ordinary possessive use. For example, one hour's respite means a respite of one hour (exactly as the cat's whiskers means the whiskers of the cat). Exceptions are accounted for in the same way: three months pregnant (in modern usage, we do not say pregnant of three months, nor one month(')s pregnant).

Possessive pronouns and adjectives{{anchor|Possessive pronouns and adjectives}}
No apostrophe is used in the following possessive pronouns and adjectives: yours, his, hers, ours, its, theirs, and whose.

The possessive of it was originally it's, and many people continue to write it this way, though the apostrophe was dropped in the early 1800s and authorities are now unanimous that it's can be only a contraction of it is or it has. For example, US President Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

used it's as a possessive in his instructions dated 20 June 1803 to Lewis for his preparations for his great expedition.

All other possessive pronouns ending in s do take an apostrophe: one's; everyone's; somebody's, nobody else's, etc. With plural forms, the apostrophe follows the s, as with nouns: the others' husbands (but compare They all looked at each other's husbands, in which both each and other are singular).

Importance for disambiguation{{anchor|Importance for disambiguation}}
Each of these four phrases (listed in Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...

's The Language Instinct
The Language Instinct
The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...

) has a distinct meaning:

My sister's friend's investments (the investments belonging to a friend of my sister)

My sister's friends' investments (the investments belonging to several friends of my sister)

My sisters' friend's investments (the investments belonging to a friend of several of my sisters)

My sisters' friends' investments (the investments belonging to several friends of several of my sisters)

Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

, on being challenged to produce a sentence whose meaning depended on a possessive apostrophe, came up with:

Those things over there are my husband's. (Those things over there belong to my husband.)

Those things over there are my husbands'. (Those things over there belong to several husbands of mine.)

Those things over there are my husbands. (I'm married to those men over there.)

Singular nouns ending with an "s" or "z" sound

This subsection deals with singular nouns pronounced with a sibilant sound at the end: /s/ or /z/. The spelling of these ends with -s, -se, -z, -ze, -ce, -x, or -xe.

Many respected authorities recommend that practically all singular nouns, including those ending with a sibilant sound, have possessive forms with an extra s after the apostrophe so that the spelling reflects the underlying pronunciation. Examples include Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

, the Modern Language Association, and The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

. Such authorities demand possessive singulars like these: Senator Jones's umbrella; Mephistopheles's cat. However, some contemporary writers still follow the older practice of omitting the extra s in all cases ending with a sibilant, but usually not when written -x or -xe. Some contemporary authorities such as the Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...

recommend or allow the practice of omitting the extra "s" in all words ending with an "s", but not in words ending with other sibilants ("z" and "x"). The 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style still recommended the traditional practice, which included providing for several exceptions to accommodate spoken usage such as the omission of the extra s after a polysyllabic word ending in a sibilant. The 16th edition of CMOS no longer recommends omitting the extra "s".
Rules that modify or extend the standard principle have included the following:

If the singular possessive is difficult or awkward to pronounce with an added sibilant, do not add an extra s; these exceptions are supported by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

and The American Heritage
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is an American dictionary of the English language published by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969...

Book of English Usage. Such sources permit possessive singulars like these: Socrates' later suggestion; James's house, or James' house, depending on which pronunciation is intended.

Classical, biblical, and similar names ending in a sibilant, especially if they are polysyllabic, do not take an added s in the possessive; among sources giving exceptions of this kind are The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

and The Elements of Style, which make general stipulations, and Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...

, which mentions only Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

and Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

. As a particular case, Jesus' is very commonly written instead of Jesus's – even by people who would otherwise add 's in, for example, James's or Chris's. Jesus' is referred to as "an accepted liturgical archaism" in Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford was an authoritative reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press...

.

Similar examples of notable names ending in an s that are often given a possessive apostrophe with no additional s include Dickens and Williams. There is often a policy of leaving off the additional s on any such name, but this can prove problematic when specific names are contradictory (for example, St James' Park
St James' Park
St James' Park, known for sponsorship reasons as the Sports Direct Arena, is an all-seater stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It is the home of Newcastle United Football Club and is the sixth largest football stadium in the United Kingdom with a capacity of between 52,387 and 52,409.St James'...

in Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

[the football ground] and the area of St. James's Park
St. James's Park
St. James's Park is a 23 hectare park in the City of Westminster, central London - the oldest of the Royal Parks of London. The park lies at the southernmost tip of the St. James's area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St. James the Less.- Geographical location :St. James's...

in London). For more details on practice with geographic names, see the relevant section below.

Some writers like to reflect standard spoken practice in cases like these with sake: for convenience' sake, for goodness' sake, for appearance' sake, for compromise' sake, etc. This punctuation is preferred in major style guides. Others prefer to add 's: for convenience's sake. Still others prefer to omit the apostrophe when there is an s sound before sake: for morality's sake, but for convenience sake.

Nouns ending with silent "s", "x" or "z"

The English possessive of French nouns ending in a silent s, x, or z is rendered differently by different authorities. Some prefer Descartes' and Dumas', while others insist on Descartes's and Dumas's. Certainly a sibilant is pronounced in these cases; the theoretical question is whether the existing final letter is sounded or whether s needs to be added. Similar examples with x or z: Sauce Périgueux's main ingredient is truffle; His pince-nez
Pince-nez
Pince-nez are a style of spectacles, popular in the 19th century, which are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from French pincer, to pinch, and nez, nose....

's loss went unnoticed; "Verreaux('s) eagle, a large, predominantly black eagle, Aquila verreauxi,..." (OED, entry for "Verreaux", with silent x; see Verreaux's eagle
Verreaux's Eagle
Verreaux's Eagle , alternatively known as the Black Eagle , is a large bird of prey. This eagle lives in hilly and mountaineous regions of southern and eastern Africa , and very locally in Western Asia.- Description :It is long. Males weigh and females weigh...

); in each of these some writers might omit the added s. The same principles and residual uncertainties apply with "naturalised" English words, like Illinois and Arkansas.

For possessive plurals of words ending in silent x, z or s, the few authorities that address the issue at all typically call for an added s and require that the apostrophe precede the s: The Loucheux's homeland is in the Yukon; Compare the two Dumas's literary achievements. The possessive of a cited French title with a silent plural ending is uncertain: "Trois femmes's long and complicated publication history", but "Les noces' singular effect was 'exotic primitive'..." (with nearby sibilants -ce- in noces and s- in singular). Compare treatment of other titles, above.

Guides typically seek a principle that will yield uniformity, even for foreign words that fit awkwardly with standard English punctuation.

Possessives in geographic names

Place names in the United States generally do not use the possessive apostrophe on federal maps and signs. The United States Board on Geographic Names
United States Board on Geographic Names
The United States Board on Geographic Names is a United States federal body whose purpose is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the U.S. government.-Overview:...

, which has responsibility for formal naming of municipalities and geographic features, has deprecated the use of possessive apostrophes since 1890 so as not to show ownership of the place. Only five names of natural features in the U.S. are officially spelled with a genitive apostrophe (one example being Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....

). "

On the other hand, the United Kingdom has Bishop's Stortford
Bishop's Stortford
Bishop's Stortford is a historic market town and civil parish in the district of East Hertfordshire in the county of Hertfordshire in England. It is situated just west of the M11 motorway, on the county boundary with Essex and is the closest large town to London Stansted Airport and part of the...

, Bishop's Castle
Bishop's Castle
Bishop's Castle is a small market town in Shropshire, England, and formerly its smallest borough. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 1,630. Bishop's Castle is east of the Wales-England border, about north-west of Ludlow and about south-west of Shrewsbury. To the south is Clun...

and King's Lynn
King's Lynn
King's Lynn is a sea port and market town in the ceremonial county of Norfolk in the East of England. It is situated north of London and west of Norwich. The population of the town is 42,800....

(but St Albans
St Albans
St Albans is a city in southern Hertfordshire, England, around north of central London, which forms the main urban area of the City and District of St Albans. It is a historic market town, and is now a sought-after dormitory town within the London commuter belt...

, St Andrews
St Andrews
St Andrews is a university town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle.St Andrews has a population of 16,680, making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....

and St Helens
St Helens, Merseyside
St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England. It is the largest settlement and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens with a population of just over 100,000, part of an urban area with a total population of 176,843 at the time of the 2001 Census...

possibly because their names date to before the use was formalised{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}) and, while Newcastle United
Newcastle United F.C.
Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional association football club based in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End, and has played at its current home ground, St James' Park, since the merger...

play at St James' Park
St James' Park
St James' Park, known for sponsorship reasons as the Sports Direct Arena, is an all-seater stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It is the home of Newcastle United Football Club and is the sixth largest football stadium in the United Kingdom with a capacity of between 52,387 and 52,409.St James'...

, and Exeter City at St James Park, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

has a St James's Park (this whole area of London is named after St James's Church, Piccadilly
St James's Church, Piccadilly
St James’s Church, Piccadilly is an Anglican church on Piccadilly in the centre of London, UK. It was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren....

). The special circumstances of the latter case may be this: 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. This could be regarded{{Who|date=August 2011}} as an example of a double genitive: it refers to the park of the church of St James.

Omission of the apostrophe in geographical names is becoming standard in some English-speaking countries, including Australia. Modern usage has been influenced by considerations of technological convenience including the economy of typewriter ribbons and films, and similar computer character "disallowance" which tend to ignore traditional canons of correctness. Practice in the United Kingdom and Canada is not so uniform.

Possessives in names of organizations

Sometimes the apostrophe is omitted in the names of clubs, societies, and other organizations, even though the standard principles seem to require it: Country Women's Association
Country Women's Association
The Country Women’s Association of Australia is the largest women's organisation in Australia. It has 44,000 members across 1855 branches. Its aims are to improve the conditions for country women and children and to try to make life better for women and their families, especially those women...

, but International Aviation {{sic|Wom|ens|hide=yes}} Association; Magistrates' Court of Victoria
Magistrates' Court of Victoria
The Magistrates' Court of Victoria is the lowest court in the Victorian court system, with the County Court of Victoria and the Supreme Court of Victoria respectively judicially higher...

, but Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union
Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union
The Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union was an Australian trade union that covered "mostly work associated with chipping, painting, scrubbing, cleaning, working in every size of tanks, cleaning boilers, docking and undocking vessels, and rigging work"...

. Usage is variable and inconsistent. Style guides typically advise consulting an official source for the standard form of the name; some tend towards greater prescriptiveness, for or against such an apostrophe. As the case of {{sic|wom|ens|hide=yes}} shows, it is not possible to analyze these forms simply as non-possessive plurals, since women is the only correct plural form of woman.

Possessives in business names

{{See also|S-form}}
Where a business name is based on a family name it should take an apostrophe, but many leave it out (contrast Sainsbury's with Harrods
Harrods
Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...

). In recent times there has been an increasing tendency to drop the apostrophe. Names based on a first name are more likely to take an apostrophe (Joe's Crab Shack). Some business names may inadvertently spell a different name if the name with an s at the end is also a name, such as Parson.
A small activist group called the Apostrophe Protection Society
Apostrophe Protection Society
The Apostrophe Protection Society is a UK society that has "the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark"...

has campaigned for large retailers such as Harrods, Currys
Currys
Currys is an electrical retailer in the United Kingdom and Ireland and is owned by Dixons Retail plc. It specialises in selling home electronics and household appliances, with 295 superstores and 73 high street stores...

, and Selfridges
Selfridges
Selfridges, AKA Selfridges & Co, is a chain of high end department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK and was opened on 15 March 1909.More recently, three other stores have been...

to reinstate their missing punctuation. A spokesperson for Barclays PLC
Barclays plc
Barclays PLC is a global banking and financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. As of 2010 it was the world's 10th-largest banking and financial services group and 21st-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine...

stated, "It has just disappeared over the years. Barclays is no longer associated with the family name." Further confusion can be caused by businesses whose names tend to look like they are pronounced differently without an apostrophe such as Paulos Circus, and other companies that leave the apostrophe out of their logos but include it in written text, such as Waterstone's
Waterstone's
Waterstone's is a British book specialist established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone that employs around 4,500 staff throughout the United Kingdom and Europe....

and Cadwalader's.

Apostrophe showing omission

An apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters, normally letters:

It is used in contractions
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

, such as can't from cannot, it's from it is or it has, and I'll from I will or I shall.

It is used in abbreviation
Abbreviation
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...

s, as gov't for government. It may indicate omitted numbers where the spoken form is also capable of omissions, as {{'}}70s for 1970s representing seventies for nineteen-seventies. In modern usage, apostrophes are generally omitted when letters are removed from the start of a word, particularly for a compound word. For example, it is not common to write {{'}}bus (for omnibus), {{'}}phone (telephone), {{'}}net (Internet). However, if the shortening is unusual, dialectal or archaic, the apostrophe may still be used to mark it (e.g., {{'}}bout for about, {{'}}less for unless, {{'}}twas for it was). Sometimes a misunderstanding of the original form of a word results in an incorrect contraction. A common example: {{'}}til for until, though till is in fact the original form, and until is derived from it.

The spelling fo'c's'le, contracted from the nautical term forecastle, is unusual for having three apostrophes. The spelling bo's'n's (from boatswain's), as in Bo's'n's Mate, also has three apostrophes, two showing omission and one possession. Fo'c's'le may also take a possessive s – as in the fo'c's'le's timbers – giving four apostrophes in one word.

It is sometimes used when the normal form of an inflection seems awkward or unnatural; for example, KO'd rather than KOed (where KO is used as a verb meaning "to knock out"); "a spare pince-nez'd man" (cited in OED, entry for "pince-nez"; pince-nezed is also in citations).

In certain colloquial contexts, an apostrophe's function as possessive or contractive can depend on other punctuation.

We rehearsed for Friday's opening night. (We rehearsed for the opening night on Friday.)

We rehearsed, for Friday's opening night. (We rehearsed because Friday is opening night. "Friday's" here is a contraction of "Friday is.")

Eye dialect
Eye dialect
Eye dialect is the use of non-standard spelling for speech to draw attention to pronunciation. The term was originally coined by George P. Krapp to refer to the literary technique of using non-standard spelling that implies a pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard, such as...

s use apostrophes in creating the effect of a non-standard pronunciation.

Use in forming certain plurals

An apostrophe is used by some writers to form a plural
English plural
In the English language, nouns are inflected for grammatical number —that is, singular or plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed for nouns...

for abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols where adding just s rather than s may leave things ambiguous or inelegant. Some specific cases:

It is generally acceptable to use apostrophes to show plurals of single lower-case letters,{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}} such as be sure to dot your i's and cross your t's. Some style guides would prefer to use a change of font: dot your is and cross your ts.{{Citation needed|date=March 2009}} Some style guides rule that upper case letters need no apostrophe (I got three As in my exams) except when there is a risk of misreading, such as at the start of a sentence: A's are the highest marks achievable in these exams.

For groups of years, the apostrophe at the end may be regarded as unnecessary, since there is no possibility of misreading. For this reason, some style guides prefer 1960s to 1960's (although the latter is noted by at least one source as acceptable in American usage), and 90s or {{'}}90s to 90's or {{'}}90's.

The apostrophe is sometimes used in forming the plural of numbers (for example, 1000's of years); however, as with groups of years, it is unnecessary because there is no possibility of misreading. Most sources are against this usage.{{Citation needed|date=February 2011}}

The apostrophe is often used in plurals of symbols. Again, since there can be no misreading, this is often regarded as incorrect. That page has too many &s and #s on it.{{Citation needed|date=February 2011}}

Use in non-English names

Names that are not strictly native to English sometimes have an apostrophe substituted to represent other characters (see also As a mark of elision, below).

Anglicised versions of Irish surnames often contain an apostrophe after an O, for example O'Doole.

Some Scottish
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...

and Irish
Irish name
A formal Irish-language name consists of a given name and a surname. Surnames in Irish are generally patronymic in etymology, although they are no longer literal patronyms, as Icelandic names are...

surnames use an apostrophe after an M, for example M'Gregor. The apostrophe here may be seen as marking a contraction where the prefix Mc or Mac would normally appear. (In earlier and meticulous current usage, the symbol is actually ‘ – a kind of reversed apostrophe that is sometimes called a turned comma, which eventually came to be written as the letter c, whose shape is similar.){{Citation needed|date=January 2011}}

In science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

, the apostrophe is often used in alien names, sometimes to indicate a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

(for example T'Pau in Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

), but also sometimes simply for decoration.

Use in transliterations

In transliterated
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

foreign words, an apostrophe may be used to separate letters or syllables that otherwise would likely be interpreted incorrectly. For example:

in the Arabic word mus'haf, a transliteration of {{script|Arab|مصحف}}, the syllables are as in mus·haf, not mu·shaf

in the Japanese name Shin'ichi
Shin'ichi
Shin'ichi or Shinichi is a very common masculine Japanese given name. Shin and ichi are separated and it is pronounced .-Possible writings:Different kanji that are pronounced are combined with the kanji for " to give different names:...

, the apostrophe shows that the pronunciation is shi·n·i·chi (hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

{{nihongo2|しんいち}}), where the letters n ({{nihongo2|ん}}) and i ({{nihongo2|い}}) are separate moras
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...

, rather than shi·ni·chi ({{nihongo2|しにち}}).

in the Chinese Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

romanization, when two hanzi are combined to form one word, if the resulting Pinyin representation can be mis-interpreted they should be separated by an apostrophe. For example, 先 (xiān) 西安 (xī'ān).

Furthermore, an apostrophe may be used to indicate a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

in transliterations. For example:

in the Arabic word Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

, a common transliteration of (part of) {{script|Arab|القرآن}} al-qur'ān, the apostrophe corresponds to the letter hamza, one of the letters in the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...

.

Non-standard English use

Failure to observe standard use of the apostrophe is widespread and frequently criticised as incorrect, often generating heated debate. The British founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society
Apostrophe Protection Society
The Apostrophe Protection Society is a UK society that has "the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark"...

earned a 2001 Ig Nobel prize for "efforts to protect, promote and defend the differences between plural and possessive". A 2004 report by OCR
OCR (examination board)
OCR is an examination board that sets examinations and awards qualifications . It is one of England, Wales and Northern Ireland's five main examination boards....

, a British examination board, stated that "the inaccurate use of the apostrophe is so widespread as to be almost universal". A 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use the apostrophe correctly.

{{anchor|Greengrocers' apostrophe}}{{anchor|Greengrocers' apostrophes}} Superfluous apostrophes ("greengrocers' apostrophes")

Apostrophes used in a non-standard manner to form noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

s are known as greengrocers' apostrophes or grocers' apostrophes, often called (spelled) greengrocer's apostrophes and grocer's apostrophes. They are sometimes humorously called greengrocers apostrophe's, rogue apostrophes, or idiot's apostrophes (a literal translation of the German word Deppenapostroph, which criticises the misapplication of apostrophes in Denglisch
Denglisch
Denglisch or Denglish is a portmanteau of the German words Deutsch and Englisch. Used in all German-speaking and Dutch-speaking countries, it describes an influx of English, or pseudo-English, vocabulary into the German or Dutch language through travel and the widespread usage of English in...

). The practice, once common and acceptable (see Historical development), comes from the identical sound of the plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

and possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

forms of most English noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s. It is often criticised as a form of hypercorrection
Hypercorrection
In linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...

coming from a widespread ignorance of the proper use of the apostrophe or of punctuation in general. Lynne Truss
Lynne Truss
Lynne Truss is an English writer and journalist, best known for her popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.-Early life:...

, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and...

, points out that before the 19th century, it was standard orthography to use the apostrophe to form a plural of a foreign-sounding word that ended in a vowel (e.g., banana's, folio's, logo's, quarto's, pasta's, ouzo's) to clarify pronunciation. Truss says this usage is no longer considered proper in formal writing.

The term is believed to have been coined in the middle of the 20th century by a teacher of languages working in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, at a time when such mistakes were common in the handwritten signs and advertisements of greengrocer
Greengrocer
A greengrocer or fruiterer is a retail trader in fruit and vegetables; that is, in green groceries. Greengrocer is primarily a British and Australian term, and greengrocers' shops were once common in suburbs, towns and villages...

s (e.g., Apple's 1/-
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...

a pound, Orange's 1/6d
Penny
A penny is a coin or a type of currency used in several English-speaking countries. It is often the smallest denomination within a currency system.-Etymology:...

a pound). Some have argued that its use in mass communication by employees of well-known companies has led to the less literate assuming it to be correct and adopting the habit themselves.

The same use of apostrophe before noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

-s forms is sometimes made by non-native speakers of English. For example, in Dutch, the apostrophe is inserted before the s when pluralising most words ending in a vowel or y for example, baby's (English babies) and jury's (English juries). This often produces so-called "Dunglish
Dunglish
Dunglish or Dutch English are the mistakes native Dutch speakers make when speaking English....

" errors when carried over into English. Hyperforeignism
Hyperforeignism
A hyperforeignism is a non-standard language form resulting from an unsuccessful attempt to apply the rules of a foreign language to a loan word , or occasionally to a word believed to be a loan word. The result reflects "neither the .....

has been formalised in some pseudo-anglicism
Anglicism
An Anglicism, as most often defined, is a word borrowed from English into another language. "Anglicism" also describes English syntax, grammar, meaning, and structure used in another language with varying degrees of corruption.-Anglicisms in Chinese:...

s. For example, the French word pin's (from English pin) is used (with the apostrophe in both singular and plural) for collectable lapel pin
Lapel pin
A lapel pin is a small pin often worn on the lapel of a dress jacket. Lapel pins can be purely ornamental or can indicate the wearer's affiliation with an organization or cause; for example, American Flag lapel pins became very popular in the United States, especially among politicians, following...

s. Similarly, there is an Andorra
Andorra
Andorra , officially the Principality of Andorra , also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra, , is a small landlocked country in southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe having an area of...

n football club called FC Rànger's
FC Rànger's
FC Rànger's is an Andorran football club, who currently plays in the Andorran First Division.- History :...

(after such British clubs as Rangers F.C.
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland, who play in the Scottish Premier League. The club are nicknamed the Gers, Teddy Bears and the Light Blues, and the fans are known to each other as bluenoses...

), a Japanese dance group called Super Monkey's
Super Monkey's
was an Okinawan pop-singing and dancing group that spawned the careers of Namie Amuro and some members of the girl group, MAX. The group went through several member and name changes before coming into prominence in 1995 with the release of their fifth single, Try Me ~Watashi o Shinjite~.- Pre-debut...

, and a Japanese pop punk
Pop punk
Pop punk is a fusion music genre that combines elements of punk rock with pop music, to varying degrees. Allmusic describes the genre as a strand of alternative rock, which typically merges pop melodies with speedy punk tempos, chord changes and loud guitars...

band called the Titan Go King's.

The widespread use of apostrophes before the s of plural nouns has led some {{Who|date=July 2010}} to believe, incorrectly, that an apostrophe is also needed before the s of the third-person present tense of a verb. Thus, he take's, it begin's, etc.{{Citation needed|date=June 2010}}

Omission

There is a tendency to drop apostrophes in many commonly used names such as St Annes
Lytham St Annes
Lytham St Annes is a conurbation in the Fylde district of Lancashire, England. The neighbouring towns of Lytham and St-Anne's-on-the-Sea have grown together and now form a seaside resort...

, St Johns Lane, and so on.

In 2009, a resident in Royal Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in west Kent, England, about south-east of central London by road, by rail. The town is close to the border of the county of East Sussex...

was accused of vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...

after he painted apostrophes on road signs that had spelt St John's Close as St Johns Close.

UK supermarket chain Tesco
Tesco
Tesco plc is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues and the second-largest measured by profits...

omits the mark where standard practice would require it. Signs in Tesco advertise (among other items) {{typo|"mens magazines", "girls toys", "kids books" and "womens shoes"}}. In his book Troublesome Words
Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words
Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words is a book by Bill Bryson, first released 1984, that catalogues some of the English language's most commonly misused words and phrases in order to demonstrate correct usage....

, author Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson
William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before moving back to the US in 1995...

lambasts Tesco for this, stating that "the mistake is inexcusable, and those who make it are linguistic Neanderthals."

Advocates of greater or lesser use

George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, a proponent of English spelling reform
Spelling reform
Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common....

on phonetic principles, argued that the apostrophe was mostly redundant. He did not use it for spelling cant, hes, etc. in many of his writings. He did however allow I'm and it's. Hubert Selby, Jr.
Hubert Selby, Jr.
Hubert "Cubby" Selby, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His best-known novels are Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream . Both novels were later adapted into films within his lifetime....

used a slash instead of an apostrophe mark for contractions and did not use an apostrophe at all for possessives. Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

made greater use of apostrophes, and frequently used sha'n't, with an apostrophe in place of the elided "ll" as well as the more usual "o". Neither author's use has become widespread.

Other misuses

The British pop group Hear'Say
Hear'Say
Hear'Say were a British manufactured pop group created in February 2001 from the winners of Popstars, an ITV reality TV show based on a New Zealand show of the same name. They enjoyed huge success with their debut single "Pure and Simple", helped by the publicity surrounding Popstars, the first of...

famously made unconventional use of an apostrophe in its name. Truss comments that "the naming of Hear'Say in 2001 was [...] a significant milestone on the road to punctuation anarchy". Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners are a British pop group with soul influences, who achieved their major success in the early to mid 1980s. They are best known for their songs "Come On Eileen" and "Geno", both of which went No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart....

, on the other hand, omit the apostrophe (though "dexys" can be understood as a plural form of "dexy", rather than a possessive form).

An apostrophe wrongly thought to be misused in popular culture occurs in the name of Liverpudlian rock band The La's
The La's
The La's were an English rock band from Liverpool, originally active from the mid-1980s to early 1990s. Fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist Lee Mavers, the group is most famous for their hit single "There She Goes". The band was formed by Mike Badger in 1984 and Mavers joined soon after...

. This apostrophe is often thought to be a mistake; but in fact it marks omission of the letter d. The name comes from the Scouse
Scouse
Scouse is an accent and dialect of English found primarily in the Metropolitan county of Merseyside, and closely associated with the city of Liverpool and the adjoining urban areas such as the boroughs of south Sefton, Knowsley and the Wirral...

slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

for "The Lads".

Criticism

Over the years, the use of apostrophes has been criticized. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

called them "uncouth bacilli". In his book, American Speech, linguist Steven Byington stated of the apostrophe that "the language would be none the worse for its abolition." Adrian Room in his English Journal
English Journal
English Journal is the official publication of the Secondary Education section of the American National Council of Teachers of English...

article "Axing the Apostrophe" argued that apostrophes are unnecessary and context will resolve any ambiguity. Again in an English Journal article, Peter Brodie stated that apostrophes are "largely decorative [and] rarely clarify meaning". Dr. John C. Wells
John C. Wells
John Christopher Wells is a British phonetician and Esperanto teacher. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics....

, Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

, says the apostrophe is "a waste of time". Peter Buck
Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck , is an American rock guitarist who is best known for playing in and co-founding alternative rock band R.E.M....

, guitarist of R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...

, claimed, apparently forgetful of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...

, "We all hate apostrophes. There's never been a good rock album that's had an apostrophe in the title."

As a mark of elision

In many languages, especially European languages, the apostrophe is used to indicate the elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

of one or more sounds, as in English.

In Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

the apostrophe is used to show that letters have been omitted from words. The most common use is in the indefinite article 'n, which is a contraction of een meaning "one" (the number). As the initial e is omitted and cannot be capitalised, if a sentence begins with 'n the second word in the sentence is capitalised. For example: 'n Boom is groen, "A tree is green". In addition, the apostrophe is used for plurals and diminutives where the root ends with certain vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s, e.g. foto's, taxi's, Lulu's, Lulu'tjie, garage's etc.

In Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, apostrophes are sometimes seen on commercial
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

materials. One might commonly see Ta' mig med ("Take me with [you]") next to a stand with advertisement leaflets; that would be written Tag mig med in standard orthography. As in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, the apostrophe must not be used to indicate the possessive, except when there is already an s present in the base form, as in Lukas' bog.

In Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, the apostrophe is used to indicate omitted characters. For example, the indefinite article een can be shortened to 'n, and the definite article het shortened to 't. When this happens in the first word of a sentence, the second word of the sentence is capitalised. In general, this way of using the apostrophe is considered non-standard, except in 's morgens, 's middags, 's avonds, 's nachts (for des morgens, des middags, des avonds, des nachts: "at morning, at afternoon, at evening, at night"). In addition, the apostrophe is used for plurals where the singulars end with certain vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s, e.g. foto's, taxi's; and for the genitive of proper names ending with these vowels, e.g. Anna's, Otto's. These are in fact elided vowels; use of the apostrophe prevents spellings like fotoos and Annaas.

The Fundamento de Esperanto
Fundamento de Esperanto
The Fundamento de Esperanto is a book by L. L. Zamenhof, published in the spring of 1905. On August 9, 1905 it was made the official source for the language by the fourth article of the Declaration of Boulogne at the first World Congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France:It is considered...

limits the elision mark to the definite article l' (from la) and singular nominative nouns (kor' from koro, "heart"). This is mostly confined to poetry. Non-standard dank' al (from danke al, "thanks to") and del' (from de la, "of the") are nonetheless frequent. In-word elision is usually marked with a hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...

, as in D-ro (from doktoro, "Dr"). Some early guides used and advocated the use of apostrophes between word parts, to aid recognition of such compound words as gitar'ist'o, "guitarist".

In Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

and Occitan word sequences such as (coup) d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

, (maître) d'hôtel (often shortened to maître d{{'}}, when used in English), L'Aquila
L'Aquila
L'Aquila is a city and comune in central Italy, both the capital city of the Abruzzo region and of the Province of L'Aquila. , it has a population of 73,150 inhabitants, but has a daily presence in the territory of 100,000 people for study, tertiary activities, jobs and tourism...

and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat or briefly L'Hospitalet is a city to the immediate southwest of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain, and the second largest in Catalonia by population...

the final vowel in the first word (de "of", la "the", etc.) is elided because the word that follows it starts with a vowel or a mute h
H
H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....

. Similarly, French has qu'il instead of que il ("that he"), c'est instead of ce est ("it is or it's"), and so on. Catalan, French, Italian and Occitan surnames sometimes contain apostrophes of elision, e.g. d'Alembert, D'Angelo.

French feminine singular possessive adjectives do not undergo elision, but change to the masculine form instead: ma preceding église becomes mon église ("my church").

In Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

the apostrophe is also used in some few combinations such as caixa-d'água ("water tower"), galinha-d'angola ("Helmeted Guineafowl"), pau-d'alho ("Gallesia integrifolia"), etc. Portuguese has many contractions between prepositions and articles or pronouns (like na for en + a), but these are written without an apostrophe. Portuguese uses a grave accent to indicate an unstressed a has been elided with a following stressed one, so one writes (and says) àquela hora instead of a aquela hora.

Modern Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

no longer uses the apostrophe to indicate elision in standard writing, although it can sometimes be found in older poetry for that purpose. Instead Spanish writes out the spoken elision in full (de enero, mi hijo) except for the contraction del for de + el, which uses no apostrophe. Spanish also switches to the masculine article immediately before a feminine noun beginning with a stressed a instead of writing (or saying) an elision: un águila blanca, el águila blanca, and el agua pura but una/la blanca águila and la pura agua. This reflects the origin of the Spanish definite articles from the Latin demonstratives ille/illa/illum. Although forms with an apostrophe indicating elision, especially m'ijo and mi'ija for mi hijo and mi hija, can be found in informal writing, this is considered nonstandard.

German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

usage is very similar: an apostrophe is used almost exclusively to indicate omitted letters. It must not be used for plurals or most of the possessive forms (Max' Vater [Max's father] being one of very few exceptions); although both usages are widespread, they are deemed incorrect. The German equivalent of greengrocers' apostrophes would be the derogatory Deppenapostroph ("idiots' apostrophe" (See the article Apostrophitis in German Wikipedia).

In modern printings of Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

, apostrophes are also used to mark elision. Certain Ancient Greek words that end in short vowels elide when the next word starts with a vowel. For example, many Ancient Greek authors would write δ’ ἄλλος (d'állos) for δὲ ἄλλος (dè állos) and ἆρ’ οὐ (âr' ou) for ἆρα οὐ (âra ou).

Initialisms in Hebrew are denoted with a geresh
Geresh
Geresh is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings.#An apostrophe-like sign placed after a letter :...

, often typed as an apostrophe. A double geresh (״), known by the plural form gershayim
Gershayim
Gershayim , also occasionally grashayim , names two distinct typographical marks in the Hebrew language. The name literally means "double geresh".-Punctuation mark:...

, is used to denote acronyms; it is inserted before (i.e., to the right of) the last letter of the acronym.

In Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

, the past tense of verbs beginning with an F or vowel begins with d' (elision of do), for example do oscail becomes d'oscail ("opened") and do fhill becomes d'fhill ("returned"). The copula is is often elided to s, and do ("to"), mo ("my") etc. are elided before f and vowels.

In Ganda, when a word ending with a vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, the final vowel of the first word is elided
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

and the initial vowel of the second word lengthened
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...

in compensation. When the first word is a monosyllable, this elision is represented in the orthography with an apostrophe: in taata w'abaana "the father of the children", wa ("of") becomes w'; in y'ani? ("who is it?"), ye ("who") becomes y'. But the final vowel of a polysyllable is always written, even if it is elided in speech: omusajja oyo ("this man"), not *omusajj'oyo, because omusajja ("man") is a polysyllable.

In Norwegian, the apostrophe marks that a word has been contracted, such as "ha'kke" from "har ikke" (have not). Unlike English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, such elisions are not accepted as part of standardised orthography but used to create a more "oral style" in writing. The apostrophe is also used to mark the genitive for words that end in an -s sound: words ending in -s, -x, and -z, some speakers also including words ending in the sound ʃ. (As Norwegian forms the plural without -s, there is no need, unlike English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, to distinguish between the -s forming the genitive and the -s forming the plural.) Usually the genitive is created by adding an -s to a word, so that "mann" (man) manns (man's). If the word already ends in an s, instead of adding in s, an apostrophe is added: los (naval pilot) los' (naval pilot's). Former American Presidents George Bush
George Bush
George Bush most often refers to:*George H. W. Bush , 41st President of the United States *George W. Bush , 43rd President of the United States , eldest son of George H. W...

could be seen having the dual genitives Bushs and Bush'.

Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

uses the apostrophe to mark elision of the definite article yr ("the") following a vowel (a, e, i, o, u, y, w in Welsh), such as i'r tŷ "to the house". It is also used with the particle yn, such as with mae hi'n "she is".

To separate morphemes

Some languages use the apostrophe to separate the root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....

of a word and its affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...

es, especially if the root is foreign and unassimilated. (For another kind of morphemic separation see pinyin, below.)

In Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

an apostrophe is sometimes used to join the enclitic definite article
Definite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...

to words of foreign origin, or to other words that would otherwise look awkward. For example, one would write IP'en to mean "the IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...

". There is some variation in what is considered "awkward enough" to warrant an apostrophe; for instance, long-established words such as firma ("company") or niveau ("level") might be written firma'et and niveau'et, but will generally be seen without an apostrophe. Due to Danish influence, this usage of the apostrophe can also be seen in Norwegian, but is incorrect – a hyphen should be used instead: e.g. CD-en (the CD).

In Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, apostrophes are used in the declension of foreign names or loan words that end in a consonant when written but are pronounced with a vowel ending, e.g. show'ssa ("in a show"), Bordeaux'hun ("to Bordeaux"). For Finnish as well as Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, there is a closely related use of the colon.

In Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...

, apostrophes can be used in the declension of some foreign names to separate the stem from any declension
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

endings; e.g., Monet' (genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

) or Monet'sse (illative case
Illative case
Illative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"...

) of Monet (name of the famous painter).

In Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, the apostrophe is used exclusively for marking inflections of words and word-like elements (but not acronyms – a hyphen is used instead) whose spelling conflicts with the normal rules of inflection. This mainly affects foreign words and names. For instance, one would correctly write Kampania Ala Gore'a for "Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

's campaign". In this example, Ala is spelt without an apostrophe, since its spelling and pronunciation fit into normal Polish rules; but Gore'a needs the apostrophe, because e disappears from the pronunciation, changing the inflection pattern. This rule is often misunderstood as calling for an apostrophe after all foreign words, regardless of their pronunciation, yielding the incorrect Kampania Al'a Gore'a, for example. The effect is akin to the greengrocers' apostrophe (see above).

In Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

, proper nouns are capitalized and an apostrophe is inserted between the noun and any following suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

, e.g. İstanbul'da ("in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

"), contrasting with okulda ("in school").

In Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

the apostrophe is used with infixed pronouns in order to distinguish them from the preceding word (e.g. a'm chwaer "and my sister" as opposed to am chwaer "about a sister").

As a mark of palatalization or non-palatalization

Some languages and transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

systems use the apostrophe to mark the presence, or the lack of, palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....

.

In Belarusian
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...

and Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

, the apostrophe is used between a consonant and a following "soft" (iotified
Iotation
Iotation is a linguistic phenomenon very characteristic of the Slavic languages. It should not be confused with palatalization, which is an entirely different process....

) vowel (е, ё, ю, я; Uk. є, ї, 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. It therefore marks a morpheme boundary before /j/, and in Ukrainian, is also occasionally as a "quasi letter". It appears frequently in Ukrainian, as, for instance, in the words: <п'ять> [p"jat'] 'five', <від'їзд> [vid'jizd] 'departure', <об'єднаний> [ob'jednanyj] 'united', <з'ясувати> [z'jasuvaty] 'to clear up, explain', <п'єса> [p'jesa] play (drama), etc.

In Russian and some derived alphabets the same function is served by the hard sign (ъ, formerly called yer). But the apostrophe saw some use as a substitute after 1918, when Soviet authorities enforced an orthographic reform by confiscating type bearing that "letter parasite" from stubborn printing houses in Petrograd.

In some Latin transliterations of certain variants of the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

(for Belarusian
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...

, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, and Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

), the apostrophe is used to replace the soft sign
Soft sign
The soft sign , also known as yer, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer, the vowel phoneme it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels...

(ь, indicating palatalization of the preceding consonant), e.g., Русь is transliterated Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

according to the BGN/PCGN system. (The prime symbol is also used for the same purpose.) Some of these transliteration schemes use a double apostrophe ( " ) to represent the apostrophe in Ukrainian and Belarusian text, e.g. Ukrainian слов’янське ("Slavic") is transliterated as slov"yans’ke.

Some Karelian
Karelian language
Karelian language is a Finnic language spoken mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Linguistically Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland and some Finnish linguists even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish...

orthographies use an apostrophe to indicate palatalization, e.g. n'evvuo ("to give advice"), d'uuri ("just (like)"), el'vüttiä ("to revive").

As a glottal stop

{{See also|Okina|Saltillo (linguistics)}}

Other languages and transliteration systems use the apostrophe or some similar mark to indicate a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

, sometimes considering it a letter of the alphabet:

In Võro
Võro language
The Võro language is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Traditionally it has been considered a dialect of the South Estonian dialect group of the Estonian language, but nowadays it has its own literary language and is in search of official recognition as an...

, the apostrophe is used in parallel with the letter "q" as symbol of plural.

Guarani
Guaraní language
Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...

, where it is called puso /puˈso/, as in the words ñe'ẽ (language, to speak), ka'a (grass), a'ỹ (sterile).

Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...

, the {{unicode
Okina
The okina, also called by several other names , is a unicameral consonant letter used within the Latin script to mark the phonetic glottal stop, as it is used in many Polynesian languages.- Geographic names in the United States :...

({{unicode|ʻ}}), an inverted apostrophe, is often rendered as ('). It is considered a letter of the alphabet.

In the Tongan language
Tongan language
Tongan is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 200,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO language.-Related languages:...

, the apostrophe is called a fakauʻa and is the last letter of the alphabet. It is used to represent the glottal stop. Like the ʻokina, it is inverted.

Various other Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...

, such as Samoan
Samoan language
Samoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...

, Tahitian
Tahitian language
Tahitian is an indigenous language spoken mainly in the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to the other indigenous languages spoken in French Polynesia: Marquesan, Tuamotuan, Mangarevan, and Austral Islands languages...

, and Chamorro
Chamorro language
Chamorro is a Malayo-Polynesian language, spoken on the Mariana Islands by about 47,000 people Chamorro (Chamorro: Fino' Chamoru or simply Chamoru) is a Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) language, spoken on the Mariana Islands (Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan) by about 47,000 people Chamorro...

.

Tetum
Tetum language
Tetum is an Austronesian language, a national language and one of the two official languages of East Timor. It is also used in parts of West Timor that adjoin East Timor, particularly in Belu Regency...

, one of the official languages of East Timor
East Timor
The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...

.

The Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian native Tupi language.

Mayan.

Several fictional languages such as Klingon
Klingon language
The Klingon language is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe....

, D'ni, Mando'a or Na'vi
Na'vi language
The Na’vi language is the constructed language of the Na’vi, the sapient humanoid indigenous inhabitants of the fictional moon Pandora in the 2009 film Avatar. It was created by Paul Frommer, a professor at the Marshall School of Business with a doctorate in linguistics...

.

The apostrophe represents sounds resembling the glottal stop in the Turkic languages
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...

and in some romanization
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...

s of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

. In typography, this function may be performed by the closing single quotation mark
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...

. In that case, the Arabic letter ‘ayn
Ayin
' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet...

(ع) is correspondingly transliterated with the opening single quotation mark.

Miscellaneous uses in other languages

In Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...

, the caron
Caron
A caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...

over lowercase t, d, l, and uppercase L consonants resembles an apostrophe: ď, ť, ľ, Ľ. This is especially so in certain common typographic renderings. But it is incorrect to use an apostrophe instead of the caron. In Slovak, there is also l with an acute accent: ĺ, Ĺ. In both languages the apostrophe is properly used only to indicate elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

in certain words (tys', as an abbreviated form of ty si in Slovak, or pad' for padl in Czech); however, these elisions are restricted to poetry. And the apostrophe is also used before a two-digit year number (to indicate the omission of the first two digits): '87.

In Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, one of the consonant gradation
Consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...

patterns is the change of a k into a hiatus
Hiatus (linguistics)
In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....

, e.g. keko → keon ("a pile → a pile's"). This hiatus has to be indicated in spelling with an apostrophe if a long vowel or a diphthong would be immediately followed by the final vowel, e.g. ruoko → ruo'on, vaaka → vaa'an. (This is in contrast to compound words, where the equivalent problem is solved with a hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...

, e.g. maa-ala, "land area".) Similarly, the apostrophe is used to mark the hiatus
Hiatus (linguistics)
In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....

(contraction) that occurs in poetry, e.g. miss' on for missä on ("where is").

In Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...

, the combination c'h is used for the consonant /x/ (like ch in English Loch Ness), while ch is used for the consonant /ʃ/ (as in French chat or English she).

In Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, an apostrophe is sometimes used as a substitute for a grave
Grave accent
The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...

or an acute accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...

after a final vowel: in capitals, or when the proper form of the letter is unavailable. So Niccolò might be rendered as Niccolo', or NICCOLO'; perché, as perche', or PERCHE'. This applies only to machine or computer writing, in the absence of a suitable keyboard. This usage is considered incorrect, or at least inelegant, by many.{{Who|date=August 2011}}

In Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

, an apostrophe after ng shows that there is no sound of /ɡ/ after the /ŋ/ sound; that is, that the ng is pronounced as in English singer, not as in English finger.

In Ganda, ng{{'}} is used in place of ŋ on keyboards where this character is not available. The apostrophe distinguishes it from the letter combination ng , which has separate use in the language. Compare this with the Swahili usage above.

In Jèrriais
Jèrriais
Jèrriais is the form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. It has been in decline over the past century as English has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration...

, one of the uses of the apostrophe is to mark gemination
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....

, or consonant length. For example, t't represents /tː/, s's /sː/, n'n /nː/, th'th /ðː/, and ch'ch /ʃː/ (contrasted with /t/, /s/, /n/, /ð/, and /ʃ/).

In the pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

(hànyǔ pīnyīn) system of romanization
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...

for Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....

, an apostrophe is often loosely said to separate syllables in a word where ambiguity could arise. Example: the standard romanization for the name of the city Xī'ān
Xi'an
Xi'an is the capital of the Shaanxi province, and a sub-provincial city in the People's Republic of China. One of the oldest cities in China, with more than 3,100 years of history, the city was known as Chang'an before the Ming Dynasty...

includes an apostrophe to distinguish it from a single-syllable word xian. More strictly, however, it is correct to place an apostrophe only before every a, e, or o that starts a new syllable after the first if it is not preceded by a hyphen or a dash. Examples: Tiān'ānmén, Yǎ'ān
Ya'an
Ya'an is a prefecture-level city in the western part of Sichuan province of Southwest China, located just below the Tibetan Plateau.-History:...

; but simply Jǐnán
Jinan
Jinan is the capital of Shandong province in Eastern China. The area of present-day Jinan has played an important role in the history of the region from the earliest beginnings of civilisation and has evolved into a major national administrative, economic, and transportation hub...

, in which the syllables are ji and nan, since the absence of an apostrophe shows that the syllables are not jin and an (contrast Jīn'ān
Jin'an
Jinan is a city in Shandong, China.Jinan may also refer to:*Jinan dialect, dialect of the Mandarin language family, spoken in Jinan, Shandong, China*Jinan Military Region, in the east of China, covering Shandong and Henan...

). This is a kind of morpheme-separation marking (see above).

In the largely superseded Wade–Giles
Wade-Giles
Wade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a romanization system for the Mandarin Chinese language. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century , and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles was the most...

romanization for Standard Chinese, an apostrophe marks aspiration
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...

of the preceding consonant sound. Example: in tsê (pinyin ze) the consonant represented by ts is unaspirated, but in ts'ê (pinyin ce) the consonant represented by ts' is aspirated.

In some systems of romanization for the Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, the apostrophe is used between moras
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...

in ambiguous situations, to differentiate between, for example, na and n + a. (This is similar to the practice in Pinyin mentioned above.)

In Hebrew, the geresh
Geresh
Geresh is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings.#An apostrophe-like sign placed after a letter :...

(a diacritic similar to the apostrophe and often represented by one) is adjacent to letters to show sounds that are not represented in the Hebrew alphabet. Sounds such as j, th, and ch are indicated using ג, ת, and צ with a geresh
Geresh
Geresh is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings.#An apostrophe-like sign placed after a letter :...

(informally "chupchik"). For example, the name George is spelled ג׳ורג׳ in Hebrew (with ג׳ representing the first and last consonants).

In the new Uzbek Latin alphabet adopted in 2000, the apostrophe serves as a diacritical mark
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

to distinguish different phonemes written with the same letter: it differentiates o' (corresponding to Cyrillic ў) from o, and g' (Cyrillic ғ) from g. This avoids the use of special characters, allowing Uzbek to be typed with ease in ordinary ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

on any Latin keyboard. In addition, a postvocalic apostrophe in Uzbek represents the glottal stop phoneme derived from Arabic hamzah or ‘ayn
Ayin
' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet...

, replacing Cyrillic ъ
Yer
The letter yer of the Cyrillic alphabet, also spelled jer or er, is known as the hard sign in the modern Russian and Rusyn alphabets and as er golyam in the Bulgarian alphabet...

.

In English Yorkshire dialect, the apostrophe is used to represent the word the, which is contracted to a more glottal (or "unreleased") /t/ sound. Most users will write in t'barn ("in the barn"), on t'step ("on the step"); and those unfamiliar with Yorkshire speech will often make these sound like intuh barn and ontuh step. A more accurate rendition might be in't barn and on't step, though even this does not truly convey correct Yorkshire pronunciation as the t is more like a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

.

Galician restaurants
Galician cuisine
Galician cuisine refers to the typical dishes and ingredients found in the cuisine of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain. These include shellfish, empanadas, polbo á feira , the cheese queixo de tetilla, the ribeiro and albariño wines and orujo liquor.The potato is a staple food in the...

in Madrid in Páginas Amarillas
Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages refers to a telephone directory of businesses, organized by category, rather than alphabetically by business name and in which advertising is sold. As the name suggests, such directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings...

sometimes use O' in their names instead of the standard article O ("The").

In standard lojban
Lojban
See also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...

orthography, it is a letter in its own right (called y'y [ɐhɐ]) that can appear only between two vowels, and is phonemically realized as either [h
Voiceless glottal fricative
The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "fricative", is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant phonologically, but often lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant...

] or, more rarely, [θ
Voiceless dental fricative
The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the 'th' in thing. Though rather rare as a phoneme in the world's inventory of languages, it is encountered in some of the most widespread and influential...

].

Typographic form

The form of the apostrophe originates in manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

writing, as a point with a downwards tail curving clockwise. This form was inherited by the typographic apostrophe ( ’ ), also known as the typeset apostrophe, or, informally, the curly apostrophe. Later sans-serif
Sans-serif
In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif or san serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without"....

typefaces had stylized apostrophes with a more geometric or simplified form, but usually retaining the same directional bias as a closing quotation mark.

With the invention of the typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...

, a "neutral" quotation mark form ( ' ) was created to economize on the keyboard, by using a single key to represent the apostrophe, both opening and closing single quotation mark
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...

s, and single primes
Prime (symbol)
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , and triple prime symbol , etc., are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics...

. This is known as the typewriter apostrophe or vertical apostrophe. The same convention was adopted for quotation mark
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...

s. Both simplifications carried over to computer keyboards and the ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

character set. However, although these are widely used due to their ubiquity and convenience, they are deprecated in contexts where proper typography is important. Various applications, such as Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

and TextEdit
TextEdit
TextEdit is a simple, open source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with Mac OS X since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-compatible operating systems such as Linux...

, support auto-correction of straight apostrophes and quotation marks to typographically accurate ones; furthermore, easier access to the latter is provided by keyboard mappings such as that of Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

.

ASCII encoding

The typewriter apostrophe ( ' ) was inherited by computer keyboards, and is the only apostrophe character
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....

available in the (7-bit) ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

character encoding
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...

, at code value 0x27 (39). As such, it is a highly overloaded character. In ASCII, it represents a right single quotation mark
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...

, left single quotation mark, apostrophe, vertical line or prime
Prime (symbol)
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , and triple prime symbol , etc., are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics...

(punctuation marks), or an acute accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...

(modifier letters).

Many earlier (pre 1985) computer displays and printers rendered the ASCII apostrophe as a typographic apostrophe, and rendered the ASCII grave accent
Grave accent
The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...

( ` ) U+0060 as a matching left single quotation mark. This allowed a more typographic appearance of text: ``I can't'' would appear as ‘‘I can’t’’ on these systems. This can still be seen in many documents prepared at that time, and is still used in the TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....

typesetting system to create typographic quotes.

Typographic apostrophe in 8-bit encodings

Support for the typographic apostrophe ( ’ ) was introduced in a variety of 8-bit character encodings, such as the Apple Macintosh
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

operating system's Mac Roman character set (in 1984), and later in the CP1252 encoding of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. There is no such character in ISO-8859-1.

Microsoft Windows CP1252 (sometimes incorrectly called ANSI or ISO-Latin) contains the typographic apostrophe at 0x92. Due to "smart quotes" in Microsoft software converting the ASCII apostrophe to this value, other software makers have been forced to adopt this as a de facto convention. For instance the HTML 5 standard specifies that this value is interpreted as CP1252. Some earlier non-Microsoft browsers would display a '?' for this and make web pages composed with Microsoft software somewhat hard to read.

Unicode

There are several types of apostrophe character in Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

:

( ' ) Vertical typewriter apostrophe (Unicode name apostrophe or apostrophe-quote), U+0027, inherited from ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

.

( {{unicode|’}} ) Punctuation apostrophe (or typographic apostrophe; right single quotation mark; single comma quotation mark), U+2019. Serves as both an apostrophe and closing single quotation mark. This is the preferred character to use for apostrophe according to the Unicode standard.

( {{unicode|ʼ}} ) Letter apostrophe (or modifier letter apostrophe
Modifier letter apostrophe
The modifier letter apostrophe is a glyph. It is used in the orthography of Tundra Nenets to denote a glottal stop. In IPA it is used to express ejective consonants. It is encoded at ....

), U+02BC. This is preferred when the apostrophe is not considered punctuation that separates letters, but a letter in its own right. Examples occur in Breton cʼh, the Cyrillic Azerbaijani alphabet
Azerbaijani alphabet
In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani alphabet refers to a Latin alphabet used for writing the Azerbaijani language. This superseded a previous versions based on Cyrillic and Arabic scripts....

, or in some transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

s such as the transliterated Arabic glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

, hamza, or transliterated Cyrillic soft sign
Soft sign
The soft sign , also known as yer, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer, the vowel phoneme it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels...

. As the letter apostrophe is seldom used in practice, the Unicode standard cautions that one should never assume text is coded thus. The letter apostrophe is rendered identically to the punctuation apostrophe in the Unicode code charts.

( {{okina}} ) The Hawaiian glottal stop, the {{okina}}okina
Okina
The okina, also called by several other names , is a unicameral consonant letter used within the Latin script to mark the phonetic glottal stop, as it is used in many Polynesian languages.- Geographic names in the United States :...

, has its own Unicode character, U+02BB.

( {{unicode|ˮ}} ) Letter double apostrophe (Unicode name modifier letter double apostrophe
Modifier letter double apostrophe
The modifier letter double apostrophe is a spacing glyph. It is used in the orthography of Tundra Nenets to denote a glottal stop, or in the orthography of Dan to indicate that a syllable has a top tone. It is encoded at .-See also:...

), U+02EE. One of two characters for glottal stop in Nenets.

( {{unicode|՚}} ) Armenian
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...

apostrophe, U+055A.

( {{unicode|Ꞌ ꞌ}} ) The Me'phaa
Tlapanec language
Tlapanec is an indigenous Mexican language spoken by more than 98,000 Tlapanec people in the state of Guerrero. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, it is tonal and has complex inflectional morphology...

glottal stop (and other languages of Mexico), the Saltillo
Saltillo (linguistics)
In Mexican linguistics, saltillo refers to a glottal stop consonant, . It was given that name by the early grammarians of Classical Nahuatl. In a number of other Nahuatl languages, the sound cognate to Classical Nahuatl’s glottal stop is , and the term saltillo is applied to either pronunciation...

, has its own Unicode characters, U+A78B and U+A78C.

Entering apostrophes

Although ubiquitous in typeset material, the typographic apostrophe ( ’ ) is rather difficult to enter on a computer, since it does not have its own key on a standard keyboard. Outside the world of professional typesetting and graphic design, many people do not know how to enter this character and instead use the typewriter apostrophe ( ' ). The typewriter apostrophe has always been considered tolerable on Web pages because of the egalitarian nature of Web publishing and the low resolution of computer monitors in comparison to print.

More recently, the correct use of the typographic apostrophe is becoming more common on the Web due to the wide adoption of the Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

text encoding standard, higher-resolution displays, and advanced anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...

of text in modern operating systems. Because typewriter apostrophes are now often automatically converted to typographic apostrophes by wordprocessing and desktop-publishing software (see below), the typographic apostrophe does often appear in documents produced by non-professionals.

How to enter apostrophes on a computer
Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

/X
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

HTML entity HTML decimal
Typewriter apostrophe ' ' ' none '
Typographic apostrophe Option + Shift + ] Alt + 0146 on number pad AltGr + shift + B or Compose ' > ’ ’

While XML (and hence XHTML
XHTML
XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....

) defines an ' character entity reference for the apostrophe, no such entity is defined in the HTML 4 standard. Instead, ' must be used.

Smart quotes

To make typographic apostrophes easier to enter, wordprocessing and publishing
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...

software often converts typewriter apostrophes to typographic apostrophes during text entry (at the same time converting opening and closing single and double quotes to their correct left-handed or right-handed forms). A similar facility may be offered on web servers after submitting text in a form field, e.g. on weblogs or free encyclopedias. This is known as the smart quotes feature; apostrophes and quotation marks that are not automatically altered by computer programs are known as dumb quotes.

Such conversion is not always done in accordance with the standards for character sets and encodings. Additionally, many such software programs incorrectly convert a leading apostrophe to an opening quotation mark (e.g., in abbreviations of years: ‘29 rather than the correct ’29 for the years 1929 or 2029 (depending on context); or ‘twas instead of ’twas as the archaic abbreviation of it was. Smart quote features also often fail to recognise situations when a prime
Prime (symbol)
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , and triple prime symbol , etc., are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics...

rather than an apostrophe is needed; for example, incorrectly rendering the latitude 49° 53′ 08″ as 49° 53’ 08”.

In Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

it is possible to turn smart quotes off (in some versions, by navigating through Tools, AutoCorrect, AutoFormat as you type, and then unchecking the appropriate option). Alternatively, typing Control-Z (for Undo) immediately after entering the apostrophe will convert it back to a typewriter apostrophe. In Microsoft Word for Windows, holding down the Control key while typing two apostrophes will produce a single typographic apostrophe.

Programming

Some programming languages, like Pascal
Pascal (programming language)
Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...

, use the ASCII apostrophe to delimit string constants
String (computer science)
In formal languages, which are used in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science, a string is a finite sequence of symbols that are chosen from a set or alphabet....

. Often either the apostrophe or the double quote may be used, allowing string constants to contain the other character (but not to contain both without using an escape character
Escape character
In computing and telecommunication, an escape character is a character which invokes an alternative interpretation on subsequent characters in a character sequence. An escape character is a particular case of metacharacters...

).

The C programming language (and many related languages like C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

or Java
Java
Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

) uses apostrophes to delimit a character constant
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....

. In C it is seen as a character value only, different from a 1-letter string.

See also

Apologetic apostrophe
Apologetic apostrophe
The apologetic or parochial apostrophe is the distinctive use of apostrophes in Modern Scots orthography. Apologetic apostrophes generally occurred where a consonant exists in the Standard English cognate, as in a , gi'e and wi .The practice, unknown in Older Scots, was introduced in the 18th...

apos
Apos
apos is a key copyediting term for apostrophe which is a mark of punctuation used to indicate possessive case or omission of a letter from a word. In XML it is one of only five predefined character mnemonics....

Caron
Caron
A caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...

Contraction (grammar)
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

Elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...

Genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

Modifier letter double apostrophe
Modifier letter double apostrophe
The modifier letter double apostrophe is a spacing glyph. It is used in the orthography of Tundra Nenets to denote a glottal stop, or in the orthography of Dan to indicate that a syllable has a top tone. It is encoded at .-See also:...

Possessive case
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...

External links

{{Wiktionary|apostrophe}}
{{refbegin}}

Is there an apostrophe in the plural of pizza? Oxford University Press article on apostrophe use in plurals

"Obsessed with Possessives" Society for Technical Communication article on apostrophe use with possessives.

The apostrophe character Problems representing apostrophes on computers.

The Apostrophe Protection Society

ASCII and Unicode quotation marks

The Dreaded Apostrophe: An approach using a single rule only

How to use an apostrophe The Oatmeal

{{refend}}

"How the Past Affects the Future: The Story of the Apostrophe" by Christina Cavella and Robin A. Kernodle

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2010}}

	Macintosh Macintosh The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...	Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...	Linux Linux Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds... /X X Window System The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...	HTML entity	HTML decimal
Typewriter apostrophe	'	'	'	none	`'`
Typographic apostrophe	Option + Shift + ]	Alt + 0146 on number pad	AltGr + shift + B or Compose ' >	`’`	`’`