Apostrophe

The apostrophe is used in many languages. Its chief purpose is to indicate a missing letter. So, for example, in French, "l'armoire" means "the wardrobe", and is composed of "armoire" preceded by "la", which drops the "a" before another vowel: the apostrophe is there to acknowledge this.

Use in English

In English it behaves not unlike a letter: it has three pronunciations (í, schwa, and a glottal stop); but it is most often silent. (The accents show stress and pronunciation, as in English phonemes.) Because of this tendency to silence, and its punctuation-like appearance, it tends to be misused. On blogs, no matter what the general standard of literacy, one can see apostrophes wrongly inserted in plurals ("plural's") and many examples of ít's where there should be íts. Throughout the world there exist notices in which the writer shows off his or her supposed familiarity with English by inserting an apostrophe into an ordinary plural, as for example: LOT’S OF BARGAIN’S! which should read simply: LOTS OF BARGAINS! And that includes English-speaking countries: Lynne Truss calls them "greengocers' apostrophes". Conversely, apostrophes are often omitted, especially among capitals and in titles, presumably for aesthetic reasons: THE RAKES PROGRESS (The Râke's Prôgress), CHAMPIONS LEAGUE (Chámpions' Lêague), BITCHES BREW (Bítches' Breŵ: singular would be Bítch’s Breŵ – Miles Davis presumably did not intend a statement about the brewing habits of bitches). It is hard not to sympathise with the periodic calls for the apostrophes abolition (and, as exemplified in this sentence, omitting it reads easily enough).

The apostrophe is often pronounced like í in ís (though all these are schwa in Australasian English): in possessive nouns after -s, -x, -z, -ce, -se, -ch, and -sh: Jônes’s càr, Méndez’s hòuse, Rêese’s dóg, wítch’s breŵ, Bùsh’s pólicy (all -zíz) Bíx’s bánquet, the fóx’s tâil, Grêece’s nèighbours (all -síz). And also in the contraction of ís after -s, -x, -z, -ce, -se, -ch, -sh: the fóx’s íll, sounds like, the fóx ís íll - though the former is almost as likely to have the schwa sound. To further the complication, some writers prefer Jônes’ càr &c. but two s’s are heard (if not it’d be Jôan’s càr).

In róck’n’rôll and other combinations with weak forms represented by a single letter, which are usually commercial, e.g. Tŏys’r’Ús ®, the first apostrophe is schwa and the second silent. And the schwa sound begins -n’t (contraction of nót): coùldn’t, dídn’t, hádn’t, ŏughtn’t, shoùldn’t, mústn’t, hásn’t - though the apostrophe, signalling the omitted ó of nót, must come after the n.

See also

• Spelling pronunciation
• Letter (alphabet)
• Alphabet
• Writing system
• Orthography
• Written language
• Writing