English spellings/Catalogs/Apostrophe

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Revision as of 11:36, 25 October 2009 by imported>Ro Thorpe (→‎Final and medial)
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Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list  
Common misspellings  

All apostrophes are shaped (in fonts where there are different shapes) like a 9, not a 6, including initial ones (see below): this contrasts with the use of inverted commas, where the opening one is shaped like a 6 (or there can be two: 66) and the closing one like a 9 (or 99): "sixty-sixes and ninety-nines".

Initial

Words that begin with an apostrophe, where it signifies a letter or letters unpronounced in quoted speech, are:

'át hat = át preposition

’em them = um hmmm *əm

'ër her

'ím him

'ŏrse horse

'òuse house

’tís and ’tẁas - poetic and/or archaic use of initial apostrophe, replacing omitted initial í of ít ís and ít ẁas

Final and medial

Final apostrophes follow an s to form the genitive plural of nouns (Mánx cáts' tâils); otherwise, like initial and medial apostrophes, they signify a missing (because unpronounced in quoted speech) letter or letters, as in gôin' for gôing (n sound replacing ng sound). Where it replaces a t or d, this final apostrophe may be pronounced as a glottal stop; otherwise final apostrophes are silent.