Spelling
Apostrophes
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Apostrophes
’
Do these little punctuation marks catch you out?
Do you know why we need apostrophes?
When should they be used?
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Omission
An apostrophe can be used to show the place of a
missing letter or letters in a word.
doDon’t
not
The missing letter
is ‘a’
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I
The missing letter
is ‘o’
am
I’m
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Possession
An apostrophe can also be used to show that one thing
belongs to something or someone else. This is known as
the apostrophe of possession.
If we start with a singular noun
the dog
then we we just add
‘s
the dog’s tail
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Possession
If the noun we start with is plural
the dogs
then we just add an apostrophe after the s
the dogs’ tails
Some plurals do not end in s, and so we add ‘s
the men’s coats
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Possession
Proper nouns that end in ‘s’ can use either apostrophe+s
or just an apostrophe.
James’ new shoes or James’s new shoes
Mr Davies’ cat or Mr Davies’s cat
These possessive pronouns do not use apostrophes:
yours
his hers
its
NOTE: The bird folded its wing.
It’s a long way to go.
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ours
theirs
possessive pronoun
short for ‘it is’
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