It’s vs. Its

Emails vs. Email’s

Jones’ vs. Joneses vs. Joneses’

I have seen them all. Sure, I have made grammatical errors before, but it is ridiculous how rotten the grammar is of the majority of internet users. Come on, people… learn the simple rules in apostrophe usage. I’ll not even get involved in spelling issues in this post, but it’s coming… not ITS not ITS’, but IT’S coming!!

Easy rule #1: An Apostrophe To Join Words

Can’t = Can not
Don’t = Do not
Isn’t = Is not
It’s = It is

Easy rule #2: To Denote possession
Consider one person, place or thing owning something.

Christie’s book
The dog’s toy
Boston’s visitors
The company’s employees
An employee’s check is missing (meaning one employee has a missing check)

Easy rule #3: Plural possession
Same rules as #2, except for usage with more than one owner. For example, two or more people, places or things.

The dogs’ toys were donated (For a group of dogs)
The employees’ checks (A group of employees)
The employees’ checks are missing (A group of employees are missing their checks)

Finally, NEVER use an apostrophe to denote plurals, but you can use to denote plural possessions as mentioned above.

Listen, I mess up commas and apostrophes often… this I know. I misspell things on occasion as well. I am a little embarrassed when I notice that I posted a blog, comment, message, etc. with improper grammar and punctuation. Oddly enough, I even get embarrassed for other people as well. I didn’t post this to be rude or critical of users. I just thought it may be a good resource for users trying to find out the proper grammatical use of apostrophes.

Please feel free to comment to let me know what I screwed up!! :-)

♥ Christie.