[Noisebridge-discuss] Grammar question regarding possessive apostrophe

[Rachel McConnell]

The apostrophe for possessives applies to everything except pronouns.
The three possessive pronouns are his, hers, and its.  They are the only
possessives that don't take an apostrophe.  Every other possessive does,
even plurals, although in the case of add-s plurals the apostrophe goes
after the final s ("all Noisebridge members' laptops" vs. "a Noisebridge
member's laptop").

"Strong enough to take a person's weight" is correct.

Other apostrophe rules are:

* contractions take an apostrophe at the point where the missing letters
are missing.  I can't think of an example now, but you often see cases
where the apostrophe is just stuck on there somewhere, in front or in
back.  You can actually contract just about anything correctly; for
example Jim often uses tho't for thought, and the apostrophe replaces
the ugh so this is fine, if idiosyncratic, usage.

* plurals MAY take an apostrophe if they are pluralizations of acronyms,
but this isn't required.  Non-acronym plurals NEVER take an apostrophe.
 Basically you can do pluralization of acronyms whichever way you want,
although inconsistency (as in my examples) looks weird.  Examples: ATMs,
LED's, NDAs, EULA's.

* you can use apostrophes as a substitute for double quotes, although
they're usually called single quotes in this case.  Many languages use
single quotes preferably to double quotes.  There are lots of variants
of quoting though.

Rachel "Grammar Nazi" McConnell

Don French wrote:
> Well, its also follows the pattern of his and hers, which is how I
> always remember it -- masculine, feminine, and neuter all agree in form.
> 
> -- Don
> 
> 
> On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Will Sargent <will.sargent at gmail.com
> <mailto:will.sargent at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     It should be the latter.  Weight "belongs to" a person.
> 
>     "its" is the exception only because "it's" is a contraction of "it
>     is", and is more frequently used.
> 
>     UK has the same rules as US in this -- at least, at the schools I
>     went to.
> 
>     Will.
> 
> 
>     On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Michael Shiloh
>     <michaelshiloh1010 at gmail.com <mailto:michaelshiloh1010 at gmail.com>>
>     wrote:
> 
>         Normally the apostrophe is used to indicate possessive, but I
>         know there
>         are many exceptions, such as "its", most of which I don't
>         understand.
> 
>         Ran across this in an otherwise excellently written document,
>         which made
>         me wonder if it's an exception:
> 
> 
>                "Strong enough to take a persons weight.
> 
>         or should it be
> 
>                "Strong enough to take a person's weight.
> 
>         What rule do you follow?
> 
>         Would this be different in the UK?
> 
>         Thanks
>         M
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