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Sunday, August 3, 2008

Apostrophe Confusion--Again!

I am still trying to help reduce the number of apostrophe goofs that appear in print. Here are three I came across recently, followed by the corrected versions:

Another blogger posted this sentence on his website in June:

It depends upon what others write about you and the ranking of their SITE'S in Google....

Let me repeat AGAIN: The apostrophe is NOT USED in making a word plural. He should have referred to "their SITES" (with no apostrophe).



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The Hoover Library Fiction website recently described a book as follows:

The "New York Times" bestselling AUTHORS most remarkable novel yet...." (sounds as if several authors put the book together)

This description intends to describe ONE bestselling AUTHOR'S most remarkable novel yet (novel belongs to author, so AUTHOR'S, which is possessive).


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The Birmingham News carried a sports story last Monday morning in which the reporter just couldn't make up his mind about IT'S and ITS. Because he apparently wasn't sure which version was correct, he decided to use both and wrote a sentence that went something like this:


This team is now pleased with its quality and it's speed.


He really can't have it both ways. When he is writing about the quality and the speed BELONGING to the team (IT), he MUST use the version WITHOUT the apostrophe:


This team is now pleased with its quality and its speed.



2 comments:

Arvind said...

In search of Newtons' who can think out of box and out of space...

We are looking at multiple reincarnations of Newton, is Newtons' the right word with apostrophe or only Newtons is the right word without any apostrophe?

Ruth Cook said...

Arvind,

Sorry for the late reply. I have been out of town for three days.

The answer to your question is that "Newtons" (in the example you gave me) does NOT need an apostrophe. It is a plural word, and there is no possession involved.

Write it this way: In search of Newtons who can think out of box and out of space....

Here are apostrophe examples with that name:

One Newton's (singular possessive) opinion is not necessarily that of all the other Newtons.

Those Newtons' opinions (plural possessive) have not been evaluated.

Hope that helps.