Be nice to the apostrophe - it may just save your reputation

Too many people in the English speaking world seem to put speed before punctuation. Good punctuation has often been a clue for prospective employers as to their candidates' appropriateness for employment. Not so much any more, although it is still a helpful decider when it gets to the final shortlist. Several friends of mine got interviews simply on their ability to punctuate correctly. These days, of course, it's way further down the list, but it is once again recouping its status as an integral part of the basic package of education. Not before time.

The apostrophe is a simple yet highly efficient symbol and helps the reader follow what you have written, because in text form there is no voice or face to hear your voice or see your face. Punctuation acts as a signpost to language and helps what I call "the voice in your head" know how to intonate written text. And emoticons are yet to make it into professional correspondence, it is only right that people use punctuation until a better system can be found. But I doubt there is one.

So let us begin by looking at the apostrophe's uses:

1. As a possessive (Saxon genitive):

We write "Phil's book" and "Jana's phone" because it helps us know it's a possession.

We write "My sister's houses" and "my sisters' houses" to show how many sisters. The apostrophe before the "s", only one sister; the apostrophe after, more than one.

In spoken English you would have to say it differently to make sure the listener was aware how many you were talking about, so you might actually say "my three sisters' houses", "both my sisters' houses", or the like.

2. As a shortening of certain verbal forms

a. "he/she/it is":
"It's a beautiful day."
"He's a handsome fellow."
"She's painting a wall."

b. "(s)he has":
"She's got a new car."
"He's been to the shop."

c. "they are":
"They're lovely apples."

d. "we have":
"We've waited for so long."

e. "I would"
"I'd like a kilo of tomatoes, please."

Et cetera...

And now where it is misused or ignored:

1. In possessive pronouns like "its":

As we have seen, "it's" means "it is", because we are removing part of the word.

"Its" is used as a possessive like "his" and "her". We wouldn't say "hi's legs", so why would we say "it's legs"? The apostrophe is to show there is something missing, and here it is clearly not being used because it follows the same pattern as "his" and "her" (see the etymology section at the end of the article).

2. In misspellings, like "they're", "there" and "their":
They are = "they're"
There = not here (just add a "t" to the beginning)
Their = belonging to them

Etymology:
English is a Germanic language, despite being over 50% populated with French and Latin words. This is because our oldest words are all Germanic. These are the words which have been in our language since before the Norman conquest in one form or another, and are usually the most important words, like prepositions (of, from, by, etc.), numbers, conjunctions (and, because, etc.), irregular verbs (sing/sang/sung, be/was/were/been, etc.) and names of basic things (seat, house, hat).

Therefore our personal pronouns are most probably going to be from Germanic too.

Let us take "his", "its" and "her" as a basis.

In all Germanic languages at one time or another there were cases (Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, etc.) and some still have them, like German. The "-s" in "his" and "its" is from the Germanic preference for that particular letter at the end of masculine and neuter words to signify there is a possessive involved.
The same applies to the "-er" in feminine possession. There is no mystery to it; no confusion needed - it is just due to the past and the English language's ties to other Germanic constructions!

League of Linguists: Intro

Let's bid a welcome to this brand new blog all about language and its contribution to the world around us. I would like to start by mentioning that this is not just going to be about the rules and regulations of grammar, but also vocabulary, etymology, comparisons to other languages and ways of learning, amongst lots of other stuff. I don't know how frequent there will be posts, but check in now and again to see.