No area of punctuation seems to give native speakers more problems than the apostrophe; a 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use it correctly. And no area of punctuation seems to cause people to get so hot under the collar at what they see as its ‘abuse’. There are even societies and websites devoted to to protecting it, and exposing the dastardly attacks on this fine and noble (but rather unimportant) little punctuation mark.
Some shops, such as Tescos, have just given up completely and consigned the apostrophe to the dustbin.
Yet the rules for using it are remarkably simple and (mainly) uncontroversial.
Nearly everything you want to know, and some things you probably don't want to hear, about apostrophes
- Contractions quiz
- Possessives quiz
- Possessive determiners and pronouns quiz
- Confusing words quiz
- Apostrophes quiz
- Annotated rant
- 2 Vocabulary quizzes
- Lots of links
