English spellings/Catalogs/Apostrophe
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Use in English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Common misspellings |
Initial
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".
Words that begin with an apostrophe, where it signifies a letter or letters unpronounced in quoted speech, are:
’em them = um hmmm *əm
’tís and ’tẁas - poetic 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. Hence there is no point in listing examples; for more see the main article.