<B>The British Council?s language clinic with ?Dr Danny? </B>

Hello and welcome to the English Language Clinic. This week, rather than concentrating on a word or group of words, I have been asked to discuss a punctuation mark; the apostrophe. The apostrophe has two main functions in English.

Firstly, it is used to indicate that a letter or group of letters has been missed out (omitted). Letters are omitted from a word either because we are using an abbreviation (from the Latin brevis, meaning ?short?), such as ?gov?t?, for ?government? or when two words are joined together (contraction), for example ?isn?t? for ?is not? and ?it?s? for ?it is?. Contractions in writing are used in informal situations, such as a letter to a friend. Whereas, in spoken English, they are used both formally and informally and their correct use is often recognised as a sign of fluency.

The second main function is to show possession. For example, if I own an apple (I have bought it in the market), it is Danny?s apple. In the same way? it is a dog?s tail, a book?s title or a country?s economy. All these are examples of singular nouns (Danny, dog, book, country); if the noun is plural and ends in an s, only an apostrophe is added; for example, ten dogs? tails, two books? titles. If the noun is singular but ends in an s, an apostrophe and an extra s are used, for example, the class?s home work and the boss?s wife.

Apostrophes are not used with possessive pronouns, such as ?yours?, ?his? and ?theirs?. It is also incorrect to use an apostrophe with the possessive ?its?, as in ?where are its windows?? They also should not be used to form plurals (the greengrocers? apostrophe ? a greengrocer is someone who sells fruit and vegetables) - as in banana?s, mangoe?s and pineapple?s.

Please send your comments, queries and questions to ?Dr Danny? emailing [email protected]

To find out more about the British Council?s English Courses please call on 403 0200.