Punctuation

Apostrophes

Apostrophes are used with:

  1. Singlar possessive nouns: Bill’s house
  2. Plural possessive nouns: Teachers’ classes
  3. Nouns showing joint possession: Bill and Hillary’s house
  4. Possessive indefinite pronouns: Someone’s house, everyone's problem
  5. Contractions: Wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t
  6. Missing numbers: the blizzard of ‘76

Apostrophes are not used with:

  1. Nouns that are not possessive: The Smiths are home.
  2. Possessive Pronouns: Its, whose, his, hers, ours, yours, and theirs
  3. Plural numbers: Figure 8s
  4. Plural letters: There are two Ys in psychology.
  5. Plural abbreviations: IOUs
  6. Plurals mentioned as words: The ayes have it.
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