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Hey guys! I hope you can help. For homework, I was asked to write an essay using some words the teacher gave in class and the last word I need to use is country. Can someone please tell—does country need to have an apostrophe-s at the end of the word? And is the following sentence I wrote correct?

The country's best pizza, is served at buca.

I appreciate your help.

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    Apostrophe yes, comma no. Mar 11, 2011 at 1:12
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    Please consider editing your question to capitalize the first word of each sentence and each occurrence of the word 'I'. It helps keep this site more professional. Thanks.
    – oosterwal
    Mar 11, 2011 at 3:35
  • Alternatively, you could always use The best pizza in the country is served at Buca.. Cleaner and no issue on apostrophes there...
    – nico
    Mar 11, 2011 at 6:17

2 Answers 2

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Some simple apostrophe rules

  • A plural, such as "Dogs" to describe many Dogs, uses no apostrophe. For your example, though, the word country becomes countries when describing more than one country (and ending in 'y' becomes 'ies' rule, I think)

  • "It's" is a contraction of it is, and so uses apostrophe s

  • "Harry's" describes something possessed by Harry, e.g Harry's foot.

    This can be a tricky one to remember, as it is a contraction of "Harry his (foot)" (a term that is never used any more in its expanded sense), and country's is also a contraction of the odd sounding "country his (or hers)". As this is a contraction, we use apostrophe s

    Using this rule we see that you are correct in using "country's"

  • Charles' describes something possessed by Charles (abbreviation used instead of Charles's) If you don't want to use s's, then we use s apostrophe

  • "Its" is the exception to the possession (apostrophe s) rule, presumably as "It his" is a contradictory gender statement, so use no apostrophe

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Your use of the apostrophe in "the country's best pizza" is correct. But it is all wrong as regards punctuation and capitals.

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