Welcome to a new week for Grammar Guides! This week is all about the humble apostrophes their main usages and the one of the most messed up set of words in the English language.
Apostrophes are punctuation marks that are used in three primary ways:
Contractions - uses an apostrophe to replace missing letters in combined words such as "They are" being replaced by "They're"
To Show Possession - Uses an apostrophe to show ownership. ex: The cat's ball. The cats' balls.
To make a plural in special circumstances. The most common is when we are making plurals of letters or numbers as: 2's, 3's, i's, and t's
The Dreaded Its vs It's
"It" and the apostrophe drive people bonkers. Because English. Unlike all other situations where 's shows possession, 's with it is a contraction. Its is the possessive form of it.
Contraction: It's the butler! (quick check: it's is a stand in for "it is")
Possession: A cat is its own master. (quick check: it is makes no sense here, so "its" it.)
References:
Kern, Jara. (2020). The Infographic Guide to Grammar. Adams Media
Venolia, Jan. (2001). Write Right! (4th ed.). Ten Speed Press
This week we talk about when to capitalize and when not to (in grammar, not in money).
Capitalization is when you place the first letter of the word in uppercase and the rest of the letters in lowercase.
✅DO - First word of a sentence and every first word after a period, a question mark, or an exclamation point
✅DO - Proper nouns like "Statue of Liberty" 🗽 but ❌DON'T capitalize "the" preceding the proper nouns like "the Statue of Liberty"
✅DO - days of the week like "Friday", months of the year like "May", and holidays like "Easter"
❌DON'T - names of seasons like "summer" or "winter"
✅DO - names and nicknames such as "William" and "Bill"
✅DO - family relation names when used immediately preceding a proper name such as "Uncle Bill"
✅DO - names of brands, companies, associations and institutions such as colleges "Boston College uses Nike shoes"
✅DO - names of streets, roads, towns, cities, states, provinces, countries and landmarks such as "the Empire State Building is located in New York City, New York"
❌DON'T- words like "country" when used before the proper noun such as the country of Canada.
✅DO - titles when used before proper names or when used in place of the proper name such as "Captain Kirk, she's going to blow!" "She's going to blow, Captain!"🖖
❌DON'T - titles that follow the proper noun or used instead of the name such as "James, the captain, sat in the center seat."
❌DON'T - titles that are used as descriptive instead of as part of the proper name such as "The captain, James Kirk, sat in the center seat."
✅ DO - the first word in a quote if it forms a complete sentence such as: The author said, "This grammar guide is very helpful."
❌DON'T -the first word in a quote if it does not form a complete sentence such as: In the grammar article the author said that he types "about 60 words per minute."
References:
Kern, Jara. (2020). The Infographic Guide to Grammar. Adams Media
Venolia, Jan. (2001). Write Right! (4th ed.). Ten Speed Press
