Apostrophes

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 1  Use apostrophes to form the possessive case of nouns.

It’s OK to form possessives from acronyms.

Avoid the possessive forms of company names, product names, and feature names.

If a singular noun ends with an s, x, or z, add an apostrophe and an s as with any other noun.

With plural nouns that end with an s, put the apostrophe after the s.

With plural nouns that don’t end with an s, add an apostrophe and an s as with singular nouns.

 2  Use apostrophes to indicate missing letters or missing numerals in a contraction.

Differentiate between the contraction it’s (it is) and the possessive pronoun its.

 3  Don’t use an apostrophe to indicate the plural of a singular noun, the plural of an acronym, or the plural of a numeral.

Only use apostrophes to form the plural of single letters, symbols, and mathematical signs.

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Examples of possessives    1 

Yes:

the car’s engine

Yes:

an OEM’s product

No:

Demo Corporation’s headquarters

Yes:

the headquarters of Demo Corporation

Yes:

the box’s contents

Yes:

James’s car

Yes:

the boss’s desk

Yes:

the lady’s dress

Yes:

the ladies’ dresses

Yes:

the Joneses’ house

Yes:

children’s requirements

Examples of contractions    2 

Yes:

Don’t drink and drive.

Yes:

It’s important to make backup copies of your files. (contraction)

but: The battery loses its power. (possessive pronoun)

Yes:

in the early ’60s.

Examples of plurals    3 

Yes:

Computer programs make writing easy.

but: We recommend reading the program’s manual. (possessive)

Yes:

The product is distributed by 10 OEMs.

Yes:

The technology was developed in the early 1980s.

Yes:

Type three 5s in a row.

Yes:

Make sure you dot your i’s.

Yes:

The program replaces unrecognizable characters with *’s.

Top:

The program replaces unrecognizable characters with asterisks.

Typographical conventions

With the invention of the typewriter, a neutral, straight form of the apostrophe was created so writers could use the same typewriter key for apostrophes as well as for opening and closing single quotation marks. This form is known as the typewriter apostrophe, and it is also available on standard computer keyboards. In contrast to the typewriter apostrophe, the typographic apostrophe looks like the numeral “9.”

To give your document a truly professional appearance, use typographic apostrophes rather than typewriter apostrophes.

 

typewriter apostrophe:

'

typographic apostrophe:

How to enter typographic apostrophes

On standard computer keyboards, there’s a key for the typewriter apostrophe, but there’s no key for the typographic apostrophe.

Nowadays, many authoring tools automatically insert a typographic apostrophe when you type a typewriter apostrophe.

Tip:
If your authoring tool doesn’t support typographic apostrophes, you can also use the Special Characters Script included in the indoition Hotkey Script Collection for Writers and Translators to enter them (for more information, visit http://www.indoition.com).

To enter a typographic apostrophe manually:

On a computer that runs Windows: Hold down Alt and type 0146 on the numeric keypad.

On a computer that runs Mac OS: Press Alt+Shift+].

On a computer that runs Linux: Press Ctrl+Shift+U, then type 2019, then press Enter.

The HTML code for the typographic apostrophe is ’.

The Unicode code point for the typographic apostrophe is U+2019.


Possessives