87
votes
Accepted
Why were Scottish & Irish names once rendered with apostrophes instead of "Mac" or "Mc"?
While you may have seen M’ with an apostrophe, look carefully: you might have instead seen M‘ with the character used for an opening quotation mark.
The difference is small but significant. According ...
- 80.3k
65
votes
Accepted
Why is the apostrophe positioned differently in "ones' complement" than "two's complement"?
Donald Knuth, that doyen of computer science, says in Art of Computer Programming, Vol 2.:
Detail-oriented readers and copy-editors should notice the position of
the apostrophe in terms like "two'...
- 976
29
votes
Can you write "... me's" (the possessive)?
"The person behind me's breathing" is called a "group genitive". Grammarian Richard Nordquist states in his introduction to the topic on ThoughtCo:
In English grammar, the group ...
- 32.9k
27
votes
Accepted
Is an apostrophe with a decade (e.g. 1920’s) generally considered “incorrect”?
My answer focuses on the header question about decades—which is the question that most readers will probably expect to find answers to here. With regard to decades expressed in numerals rather than ...
- 161k
25
votes
Accepted
Is possessive's apostrophe dispensable in any case?
There are a few limited cases for which an apostrophe is not used to indicate possession. For example, if you're referring to something belonging to it or her, the correct form is its or hers, with no ...
- 1,065
19
votes
Accepted
“other’s lives” vs. “others’ lives”
Since you are talking about multiple others ("...the lives of others"), then the apostrophe comes after the s.
having an impact on others' lives
- 3,648
16
votes
Which singular names ending in “s” form possessives with only a bare apostrophe?
Bryan Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage, second edition (2003) offers the following discussion of how to handle possessive proper names ending in -s:
POSSESSIVES. A. Singular Possessives. To ...
- 161k
15
votes
"Brazilian's army's ammo supply": is it right to use apostrophes on two consecutive nouns like this?
It would depend on what you meant. If you mean the Brazilian army was short of ammunition, then you would write the Brazilian Army's ammo supply is low.
But if you were referring to an army that is ...
- 36.7k
14
votes
Accepted
Else's or Elses' or Elses
It's "else's". Here, someone else is a singular compound noun, and the novel belongs to them. The possessive apostrophe is used.
- 13k
14
votes
Possessive form for a surname ending with "z"
Spelling Possessives: A simple rule with zero exceptions
There is no special rule for surnames which does not also apply to common nouns.
For that matter, there is no special rule for singulars versus ...
- 134k
14
votes
Why were Scottish & Irish names once rendered with apostrophes instead of "Mac" or "Mc"?
It's a good question and I didn't have the answer so I asked it on r/AskLinguistics on Reddit and got a good answer. I'm going to quote it (with little changes):
The Victorians abbreviated things a ...
- 16.5k
8
votes
A unique case of capitalising mid-sentence and using apostrophe 's'
When you use a proper noun containing the as an adjective, you usually drop the. So you would say
former Roots member, Malik B,
and not "former The Roots member".
Similarly, even without a the ...
- 87.7k
8
votes
Do I add " ’s " after the number on a pope/king’s name? (e.g. Pope Paul VI’s)
The English apostrophe-s is not a case inflection the way you have in German or Russian, Latin or Greek. Rather it is a clitic that attaches to the end of the entire noun phrase, not merely to the ...
- 134k
8
votes
Master thesis, master's degree thesis or master degree thesis
https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/24377/use-master-thesis-or-masters-thesis
"Grammatically speaking, master's thesis unequivocally means a thesis of a master. Master thesis can be read the same ...
- 6,913
8
votes
Accepted
Does a possessive still require an apostrophe when a noun has been omitted to avoid repetition?
In the example sentence, "Their understanding of the subject is as good as their masters," the actual thing being compared is the understanding of their masters. The sentence therefore requires a ...
- 3,490
8
votes
Accepted
Why is there an apostrophe in the name Ilya M. Sobol'?
It's a diacritic marker
The key is in the original Russian name: Илья Меерович Соболь. The last letter there (ь) is a soft sign, which is sometimes represented by an apostrophe in transliteration ...
- 65.2k
7
votes
Accepted
Apostrophes in a list of people
If the boat is posssessed equally by the three, you only need put the apostrophe on the last person's name.
E.g., John, Jacob, and Mary's boat.
The possessive, in a list, on the last person shows ...
- 324
7
votes
Accepted
"The species/species'/species's survival..."
The online Chicago Manual of Style (both 16th and 17th editions) states:
When the singular form of a noun ending in s is the same as the plural (i.e., the plural is uninflected), the possessives of ...
7
votes
Accepted
What is the correct way to say "It was this week that Justin and my lives changed forever"?
The least amount of restructuring I can think of is:
It was this week that both my life and Justin's changed forever.
The use of both makes it clear that there are two lives—rather than a shared ...
- 37.9k
6
votes
Is the possessive of "one" spelled "ones" or "one's"?
Indefinite pronouns like one and somebody: one's, somebody's
The possessive of the pronoun one is spelled one's. There are many types of pronouns. Unfortunately, people explaining the mnemonic for ...
- 80.3k
6
votes
Accepted
What does "carry't" mean?
In Early Modern English, vowels that didn't represent any sound were often dropped and people indicated this omission by using an apostrophe.
It was mostly used in past tense and past participles when ...
- 16.5k
6
votes
Accepted
How do you punctuate what FFS expands to?
I have always written it as 'for fuck's sake' when I have needed to.
Definition of 'FFS'
in British English
slang
ABBREVIATION FOR the taboo expression 'for fuck's sake': used esp in social media, ...
- 12k
6
votes
Why no apostrophe in the possessive "it"?
It's purely conventional.
In linguistics, writing systems are usually considered a separate thing from the language itself—they tend to be deliberately constructed and taught, and can be deliberately ...
- 1,110
5
votes
Is "mens" a valid word?
The "possessive" or genitive -'(s) construction in English has several uses.
In modern English, the most common and productive usage is to turn an entire NP (or DP, depending on what framework you're ...
- 80.3k
5
votes
Alzheimer disease or Alzheimer's disease?
EL&U member 'Hot Lick's' commented,
"Alzheimer's disease" (using the possessive) appears to be the most common spelling...
This is correct, for the reasons 'Hot Lick's' cited, and as evidenced ...
- 792
5
votes
Is Lewis Carroll correct in his suggestion on some abbreviations?
Even Carroll admits, by the word 'innovations' that these spellings are not the usual ones. He had the same rights to change English orthography as any of us have; the method is to use (and explain as ...
- 35.1k
5
votes
Why is "Geography's test was difficult" ungrammatical?
We do find geography's X with certain meanings.
R. B. Cathcart; American Geography's Image of Human Life in Earth
J. M. Olson et al.; Geography's Inner Worlds
G. K. Conolly, ed. Geography's Place: ...
- 19.6k
5
votes
Accepted
Is there a way to create a contraction between any noun and the word "is"?
Yes, you can say "Amanda's out of town". Any noun or noun phrase may be part of a contraction. For example, "the king of England's about to die".
One of the comments above says ...
- 1,051
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