Perilous Adventures
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Sandra Hogan
 

Why did everyone stay away from the Giant Kid’s Playground? Because they were afraid of the giant kid, of course.

This is one of the many apostrophe jokes in Lyn Truss’s classic punctuation text, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which is so endearing that it became a bestseller when it was first published in 2003. Her latest edition of the book includes stick-on apostrophes so that punctuation sticklers, angered to the point of militancy by incorrect use of apostrophes on public signage, can quickly pull a sticker out of her book and correct the offending sign.

Truss has plenty of supporters in the war against the incorrect use of apostrophes. When she did a survey in her London newspaper column she received hundreds of letters and emails with punctuation horror stories. ‘It was in 1987, I’ll never forget, and it said “Cream Tea’s”’ gives you an idea of the despair she tapped into.

The fact is, apostrophes are tricky. If you happen to know how to use them, you have every reason to feel superior to lesser-endowed humans. You are practically superhuman if you get your apostrophes right every time.

I won’t run through all the rules for using apostrophes but I want to point out a couple of the trickier points on apostrophe usage. If you get these right, you can always feel superior, even if you discover that you have your dress on inside out at a job interview.
Starting with the easy ones, make sure you get your its’s right. Don’t do what the British Library pamphlet did when it welcomed new members to the library, to ‘it’s services and catalogues’. It’s always means it is. Apostrophes are not required for possessive pronouns including mine, ours, theirs or its.

Names ending in s are vexing, to say the least. Do you ask to borrow Chris’s book or Chris’ book? Or do you just give up and go to the library? There is no simple answer to this.

If you look up an eminent authority like Fowler’s Modern English Usage, you may be relieved at first to find that it should be Chris’s book (although many other grammar books will disagree). But even Fowler can’t leave it at that. If a name ends in a ‘z’ sound, like Xerxes’ sword or Dickens’ dog, Fowler warns you not to add the extra s. And there are different rules again for people in the Bible like Jesus and Moses. The Australian Style manual simplifies the matter by suggesting you always add the ‘s to names ending with s. Thus:
Burns’s poems, Dickens’s novels and Herodotus’s birthplace

See, you feel better already, even if you tripped over on the way out of the interview and your dress flew up over your head.
The one that grieves and puzzles me still —and even Lyn Truss can’t help me — is the idea of the plural noun that is descriptive, not possessive. For example, we refer to our drivers licence without an apostrophe. That is drivers is seen as describing licence, not possessing it. On the same principle, Brisbane book lovers will go to the Brisbane Writers Festival in September, although those recalcitrant southerners recently went to the Sydney Writers’ Festival. The Australian Style manual even allows six weeks time, which I think is pushing it much too far!

In Australia, place names do not take apostrophes. You go to Kings Cross in Sydney and to Suttons Beach in Redcliffe. St Josephs College would be correct, although many schools of that name add the apostrophe just to be sure.

That’s enough for one day. You are already better than the average person. Hold your head up proudly and go to the shop that advertises Job’s Available (or Trouser’s Reduced).

About the Author

Sandra HoganSandra Hogan is a writer and editor, with a strong background in journalism and government communications. She is the director of WriteBusiness, which offers training, coaching and mentoring to people in business and government who want to improve their writing skills.


 

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