{"id":169,"date":"2025-05-08T13:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/?p=169"},"modified":"2025-05-08T13:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T12:00:10","slug":"the-unnecessary-apostrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"The Unnecessary Apostrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now that the main exam season is well underway, I thought that it was a good time to share my thoughts on The Unnecessary Apostrophe. If you are a student sitting exams right now, or you are a parent, teacher or friend helping young people prepare for their exams, then this post is for you!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those of you who know me will know that unnecessary apostrophes follow me everywhere I go. I have a very bad case of apostrophobia. Ugh, they just go through me. And they\u2019re everywhere. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I do love a beautiful, correctly placed apostrophe. In fact, I\u2019m a big fan of punctuation. But when innocent apostrophes are forced into places where they don\u2019t belong, it sends shivers down my spine.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, when you\u2019re preparing for your exams, please remember that apostrophes are for two purposes only<\/em>: firstly, to indicate missing letters in contractions such as, don\u2019t, you\u2019re<\/em> and so on. Secondly, apostrophes are used to show possession, that something belongs to someone or something as in, Sharon\u2019s pen <\/em>or the school\u2019s policy.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s where it goes wrong: if you are talking about your GCSEs<\/em>, don\u2019t write GCSE\u2019s<\/em>. It\u2019s the same with DVDs, MOTs<\/em> and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plurals that involve numbers also do not require an apostrophe. For example, if you\u2019re writing about 1930s America, <\/em>don\u2019t write 1930\u2019s. <\/em>Similarly, write over 18s <\/em>not over 18\u2019s.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This one will cook your head a bit (particularly in light of my point about apostrophes showing possession). If you are writing about something belonging to it, then write its <\/em>(no apostrophe). For example, if you are writing about the final scene in a play, you should write, its final scene is poignant.<\/em> (Obviously I\u2019m talking about An Inspector Calls \u2013 see my review of the play here  https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/?p=137<\/a> ). If you\u2019re not sure whether to use its <\/em>or it\u2019s<\/em> then do the following: in your head, try the sentence with it is and<\/em> it has. <\/em>If neither of these sounds right, then the word you are looking for is probably its <\/em>(without an apostrophe).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are sitting WJEC English Language, this knowledge could also prove to be very useful for the proofreading task in your Unit 2 exam on 23rd<\/sup> May. For your other exams, and indeed for your future, it will also be more impressive if you can demonstrate that you know how to use punctuation correctly. The pictures (or should that be picture\u2019s<\/em>?) below are just two examples of the unnecessary apostrophes that follow me around. After reading this blog, you too might be infected by apostrophobia, but I suppose there are worse things to catch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have a great day \ud83d\ude0a  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the main exam season is well underway, I thought that it was a good time to share my thoughts on The Unnecessary Apostrophe. If you are a student sitting exams right now, or you are a parent, teacher or friend helping young people prepare for their exams, then this post is for you!   […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[39,36,37,38],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-language","tag-english-language","tag-exams","tag-gcses","tag-grammar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}