Apostrophe

For the prime symbol (′) used for example for feet and inches, see Prime (symbol).

For other uses, see Apostrophe (disambiguation).

The apostrophe ( ’  or  ' ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages written in the Latin alphabet. In English, it has two main functions: it marks omissions; and it assists in marking the possessives of all nouns and many pronouns. (In strictly limited cases, it is sometimes also allowed to assist in marking plurals, but most authorities are now against such usage; see below.) According to the OED, the word comes ultimately from Greek ἡ ἀπόστροφος [προσῳδία] ([hē apóstrophos [prosōidía]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), the [accent of] “turning away”, or elision), through Latin and French.

The apostrophe should not be confused with the right closing single quotation mark (usually rendered identically but serving a quite different purpose), or with the similar-looking prime (which is used to indicate measurement in feet or arcminutes, or for various mathematical purposes).

English language usage

Possessive apostrophe

See also: Saxon genitive

An apostrophe is used to indicate possession.

• For most singular nouns, the ending 's is added, e.g. the cat's whiskers.

• When the noun is a normal plural with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive, so pens' lids (where there is more than one pen) is correct rather than pens's lids. If the plural is not one that is formed by adding s, add an s for the possessive, after the apostrophe: children's hats, women's hairdresser, some people's eyes (but compare some peoples' recent emergence into nationhood, where peoples is meant as the plural of the singular people). These principles are universally accepted.

• If the word ends in an s but is singular, practice varies as to whether to add 's or only an apostrophe. (For discussion on this and the following points, see below.) In general, a good practice is to follow whichever spoken form is judged best: Boss's shoes, Mrs. Jones' hat (or Mrs. Jones's hat, if that spoken form is preferred). In many cases, both spoken and written forms will differ between people.

• Some people like to reflect standard spoken practice in special cases like these: for convenience' sake, for goodness' sake, for appearance' sake, etc. Others prefer to add 's in the standard way: for convenience's sake. Still others prefer to omit the apostrophe when there is an s sound before sake: for morality's sake, but for convenience sake.

• Compound nouns have their singular possessives formed with an apostrophe and an s at their end, in accordance with the rules given above: the Attorney-General's husband; the Minister for Justice's religion; her father-in-law's new wife. In the examples just given, the plurals are formed with an s that does not occur at the end: Attorneys-General, etc. An interesting problem therefore arises with the possessive plurals of these compounds. Sources that rule on the matter appear to favour the following forms, in which there is both an s added to form the plural, and a separate s added for the possessive: the Attorneys-General's husbands; the Ministers for Justice's religions; their fathers-in-law's new wives.

An apostrophe

• An apostrophe is used in time and money references in constructions such as one hour's respite, two weeks' holiday, a dollar's worth, five pounds' worth. Although it may not be immediately obvious, this is an ordinary possessive use. For example, one hour's respite means a respite of one hour (exactly as the cat's whiskers means the whiskers of the cat).

• No apostrophe is used in the following possessive pronouns and adjectives: yours, his, hers, ours, its, theirs, and whose. (Many people wrongly use it's for the possessive of it; but authorities are unanimous that it's can only properly be a contraction of it is or it has.) All other possessive pronouns ending in s do take an apostrophe: one's; everyone's; somebody's, nobody else's, etc. With plural forms, the apostrophe follows the s, as with nouns: the others' husbands (but compare They all looked at each other's husbands, in which both each and other are singular).

To illustrate that possessive apostrophes matter, and that their usage affects the meaning of written English, consider these four phrases (listed in Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct), each of which has a meaning distinct from the others:

• my sister's friend's investments (I have one sister and she has one friend.)
• my sisters' friends' investments (I have many sisters and they have many friends.)
• my sisters' friend's investments (I have many sisters and they have one friend.)
• my sister's friends' investments (I have one sister and she has many friends.)

Kingsley Amis, on being challenged to produce a sentence whose meaning depended on a possessive apostrophe, came up with:

• “Those things over there are my husbands.” (I'm married to those men over there.)
• “Those things over there are my husband's.” (Those things over there belong to my husband.)

Origins

The use of the apostrophe to mark the English possessive ultimately derives from the Old English genitive case, indicating possession, which often ended in the letters -es, which evolved into a simple s for the possessive ending. An apostrophe was later added to mark the omitted e; this came into general use in the 17th century. The 's ending is sometimes called the Saxon genitive, although linguists now generally consider it a clitic rather than a case ending.

Singular nouns ending in s, z, or x

Respected sources require that almost all singular nouns, including those ending in s, z, or x, have possessive forms with an extra s after the apostrophe. Examples include the Modern Language Association, The Elements of Style, The Economist, and Purdue University's Online Writing Lab. Such sources would demand possessive singulars like these: Senator Jones's umbrella; Mephistopheles's cat.

Rules that modify or extend this principle have included the following:

• If the singular possessive is difficult or awkward to pronounce with an added s sound, do not add an extra s; these exceptions are supported by University of Delaware, The Guardian, Emory University's writing center, and The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Such sources permit possessive singulars like these: Socrates' later suggestion; James's house, or James' house, depending on which pronunciation is intended.

• Classical, biblical, and similar names ending in an s sound, especially if they are polysyllabic, do not take an added s in the possessive; among sources giving exceptions of this kind are The Times and The Elements of Style, which make general stipulations, and Vanderbilt University, which mentions only Moses and Jesus. As a particular case, Jesus' is very commonly written instead of Jesus’s, even by people who would otherwise add 's in, for example, James's or Chris's; Jesus' is referred to as “an accepted liturgical archaism” in Hart's Rules. See Possessive of Jesus.

Similar examples of notable names ending in an s that are often given a possessive apostrophe with no additional s include Dickens and Williams. There is often a policy of leaving off the additional s on any such name, but this can prove problematic when specific names are contradictory (for example, St James' Park in Newcastle [the football ground] and the area of St. James's Park in London). For more details on practice with geographic names, see the relevant section below.

The English possessive of French names ending in a silent s is rendered differently by different authorities. Some prefer Descartes' and Dumas', while others insist on Descartes's and Dumas's. Certainly an s sound (or strictly a z sound, with Dumas) is pronounced in these cases; the theoretical question is whether the existing s is the one that is sounded, or whether another s needs to be supplied. A similar problem arises with French names ending in silent x. Many authorities prescribe possessives with an added s: Sauce Périgueux's main ingredient is truffle; but an apostrophe alone is also acceptable. For possessive plurals of words ending in silent x or s, the few authorities that address the issue at all call for an added s, and require that the apostrophe precede the s: The Loucheux's homeland is in the Yukon; Compare the two Dumas's literary achievements. As usual in punctuation, the best advice is to respect soundly established practice, and beyond that to strive for simplicity, logic, and especially consistency.

Possessives in geographic names

United States place names generally do not use the possessive apostrophe. The United States Board on Geographic Names, which has responsibility for formal naming of municipalities and geographic features, has deprecated the use of possessive apostrophes since 1890. Only five names of natural features in the U.S. are officially spelled with a genitive apostrophe (one example being Martha's Vineyard). On the other hand, Britain has Bishop's Stortford, Bishop's Castle and King's Lynn (but St Albans, St Andrews and St Helens) and, while Newcastle United play at St Jamesʼ Park, and Exeter City at St James Park, London has a St James's Park (this whole area of London is named after St Jamesʼs Church, Piccadilly). The special circumstances of the latter case may be this: the customary pronunciation of this place name is reflected in the addition of an extra -s; since usage is firmly against a doubling of the final -s without an apostrophe, this place name has an apostrophe. This could be regarded as an example of a double genitive: it refers to the park of the church of St James. None of this detracts from the fact that omission of the apostrophe in geographical names is becoming a clear standard in most English-speaking countries, including Britain and Australia.

Possessives in business names

Where a business name is based on a family name, it may or may not take an apostrophe (compare Sainsbury's and Harrods), though in recent times there has been an increasing tendency to drop the apostrophe. Names based on a first name are more likely to take an apostrophe (Joe's Crab Shack). The Apostrophe Protection Society has campaigned for large retailers such as Harrods, Currys and Selfridges to reinstate their missing punctuation. A spokesperson for Barclays plc stated, “It has just disappeared over the years. Barclays is no longer associated with the family name.”

Apostrophe showing omission

An apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters:

• It is used in contractions, such as can't from can not, it's from it is or it has, and I'll from I will or I shall.

• The word fo'c's'le is notable in English for having three apostrophes; the alternative spelling without omissions is “forecastle”.

• It is used in abbreviations, as gov't for government, or '70s for 1970s. In modern usage, apostrophes are generally omitted when letters are removed from the start of a word. For example, it is not common to write 'bus (for omnibus), 'phone (telephone), 'net (Internet). However, if the shortening is unusual, dialectal or archaic, the apostrophe may still be used to mark it (e.g., 'bout for about, 'less for unless, 'twas for it was). Sometimes a misunderstanding of the original form of a word results in an incorrect contraction. A common example: 'til for until, though till is in fact the original form, and until is derived from it.

• It is sometimes used when the normal form of an inflection seems awkward or unnatural; for example, KO'd rather than KOed (where KO is used as a verb meaning “to knock out”), or n'th (an unspecified ordinal) rather than nth.

• In certain colloquial contexts an apostrophe's function as possessive or contractive can depend on other punctuation.

• We rehearsed for Friday's opening night. (We rehearsed for the opening night on Friday.)
• We rehearsed, for Friday's opening night. (We rehearsed because Friday is opening night.)

Use in forming certain plurals

An apostrophe is used by some writers to form a plural for abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols where adding just s rather than 's may leave things ambiguous or inelegant. While British English formerly endorsed the use of such apostrophes after numbers and dates, this usage has now largely been superseded. Some specific cases:

• It is generally acceptable to use apostrophes to show plurals of single lower-case letters, such as be sure to dot your i's and cross your t's. Some style guides would prefer to use a change of font: dot your is and cross your ts. Upper case letters need no apostrophe as there is no risk of misreading: I got three As in my exams.
• For groups of years, the apostrophe at the end cannot be regarded as necessary, since there is no possibility of misreading. For this reason, most authorities prefer 1960s to 1960's (although the latter is noted by at least one source as acceptable in American usage), and 90s or '90s to 90's or '90's.
• The apostrophe is sometimes used in forming the plural of numbers (for example, 1000's of years); however, as with groups of years, it is unnecessary: there is no possibility of misreading. Most sources are against this usage.
• The apostrophe is often used in plurals of symbols. Again, since there can be no misreading, this is also wrong. That page has too many &s and #s on it.
• Finally, a few sources accept its use in an alternative spelling of the plurals of a very few short words, such as do, ex, yes, no, which become do's, ex's, etc. In each case, dos, exes, yeses (or yesses) and noes would be preferred by most authorities. Nevertheless, many writers are still inclined to use such an apostrophe when the word is thought to look awkward or unusual without one.

Use in non-English names

• Irish surnames often contain an apostrophe after an O, for example O'Reilly. This arose from a rendering of the Irish Ó.
• Some Scottish and Irish surnames use an apostrophe after an M, for example M'Gregor. The apostrophe here may be seen as marking a contraction where the prefix Mc or Mac would normally appear. (Note, however, that in earlier and meticulous current usage, it is ‘ – a kind of reversed apostrophe that is sometimes called a turned comma, which eventually came to be written as the letter c, whose shape is similar.)
• French and Italian surnames sometimes contain apostrophes, e.g. D'Angelo.
• In science fiction, the apostrophe is often used to decorate alien names.

Non-standard English use

Greengrocers' apostrophes

Sign to Green Craigs housing development.

Apostrophes used incorrectly to form plurals are known as greengrocers' apostrophes (or grocers' apostrophes, or sometimes humorously greengrocers apostrophe's). The practice comes from the identical sound of the plural and possessive forms of most English nouns. It is often considered a form of hypercorrection coming from a widespread ignorance of the proper use of the apostrophe or of punctuation in general. Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, points out that before the 19th Century, it was standard orthography to use the apostrophe to form a plural of a foreign-sounding word that ended in a vowel (e.g. banana's, folio's, logo's, quarto's, pasta's, ouzo's) to clarify pronunciation. Truss says this usage is no longer considered proper in formal writing.

It is believed that the term was first coined in the middle of the twentieth century by a teacher of languages working in Liverpool, at a time when such mistakes were common in the handwritten signs and advertisements of greengrocers, e.g., “Apple's 1/- a pound, orange's 1/6d a pound”. In recent years, this misuse has become increasingly frequent in other forms of advertisement, particularly those of small businesses, e.g., from Hackney Market in London, UK: “Christmas Card's”. Some have argued that its use in mass communication by employees of well-known companies has led to the less grammatically able assuming it to be correct and adopting the habit themselves.

The same error is sometimes made by non-native speakers of English, and this hyperforeignism has been formalised in some pseudo-anglicisms. For example, the French word pin's (from English pin) is used (with the apostrophe in both singular and plural) for collectible lapel pins. Also, there is an Andorran football club called FC Rànger's (after such British clubs as Rangers F.C.).

The widespread use of apostrophes before the “s” of plural nouns has led some to believe that an apostrophe is also needed before the “s” of the third-person present tense of a verb. Thus, “he take's”, “it begin's” etc.

Incorrectly used apostrophes are also often referred to as rogue apostrophes.

Omitting the apostrophe

While the greengrocers' apostrophe is more likely to be found within small businesses, the UK's largest supermarket chain, Tesco, has a habit of omitting the mark where it should be included. Its in-store signage advertises (among other items) “mens magazines”, “girls toys”, “kids books” and “womens shoes”. The author Bill Bryson lambasts Tesco for this reason in his book Troublesome Words, stating, “The mistake is inexcusable and those who make it are linguistic Neanderthals.”

George Bernard Shaw, a proponent of English spelling reform on phonetic principles, argued that the apostrophe was mostly redundant. He did not use it for spelling “cant” or “hes” when writing Pygmalion. He did however allow “I'm” and “it's”. Lewis Carroll made greater use of apostrophes, and frequently used “ca'n't” and “sha'n't”. Neither author's use has become widespread.

Other misuses

The British pop group Hear'Say famously made unconventional use of an apostrophe in its name. In her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss states that “the naming of Hear'Say in 2001 was [...] a significant milestone on the road to punctuation anarchy.”

Other languages

An apostrophe in Braille

As a mark of elision

In many languages, especially European languages, the apostrophe is used to indicate the elision of one or more sounds, as in English. For example:

• In Afrikaans the apostrophe is used to show that letters have been omitted from words. The most common use is in the indefinite article 'n which is a contraction of een meaning 'one' (the number). As the initial 'e' is omitted and cannot be capitalised, if a sentence begins with 'n the second word in the sentence is capitalised. For example: 'n Boek is groen, “A book is green.”

• In Danish and Norwegian, where some very common words have a pronunciation that does not match the spelling, use of the written apostrophe is informal, yet very popular in all kinds of commercial materials. Thus, one might commonly see Ta' mig med (“Take me with [you]”) next to a stand with advertisement leaflets; that would be written Tag mig med in standard orthography. As in German, the apostrophe must not be used to indicate the possessive, except when there is already an s present in the base form, as in Lukas' bog.

• In the Dutch language, the apostrophe is again used to indicate omitted characters. For example, the indefinite article een can be shortened to 'n, and the definite article het shortened to 't. When this happens with the first word of a sentence, only the second word of the sentence is capitalised. In general, this way of using the apostrophe is considered non-standard, except for 's morgens, 's middags, 's avonds, 's nachts (des morgens/middags/avonds/nachts: at morning/afternoon/evening/night). In addition, the apostrophe is used for plurals where the singulars end with certain vowels, e.g. foto's, taxi's, and for the genitive of proper names ending with these vowels, e.g. Anna's, Otto's. These are in fact elided vowels; use of the apostrophe prevents spellings like fotoos and Annaas.

• In French phrases such as coup d'état and maître d'hôtel (the latter often shortened to maître d', when used by English speakers), the vowel in the preposition de (of) is elided because the word which follows it also starts with a vowel, or a silent consonant followed by a vowel. Similarly, French has l'église for la église (“the church”), qu'il for que il (“that he”), and so on. Analogous constructions are common in Italian and Catalan, too.

• German usage is very similar: an apostrophe is used almost exclusively to indicate omitted letters. It must not be used for plurals or most of the possessive forms (Max' Vater being an exception, for instance), both of which usages are widespread, but deemed wrong. (See article Apostrophitis in the German Wikipedia.)

To separate morphemes

Some languages use the apostrophe to separate the root of a word from its affixes, especially if the root is a foreign, unassimilated word.

• In Danish, an apostrophe is sometimes used to join the enclitic definite article to words of foreign origin, or other words which would otherwise look awkward. Thus, one would write IP'en to mean “the IP address”. There is some variation in what is considered “awkward enough” to warrant an apostrophe; for instance, long-established words such as firma (company) or niveau (level) might be written firma'et and niveau'et, but will generally be seen without an apostrophe.

• In Estonian, apostrophes can be used in the declension of some foreign names to separate the stem from any declension endings; e.g., Monet' or Monet'sse for the genitive case and illative case, respectively, for (the famous painter) “Monet”.

• In Polish, the apostrophe is used exclusively for marking inflections of words and word-like elements (e.g. acronyms) whose spelling conflicts with the normal rules that govern which inflection form to choose. This mainly affects foreign words and names. Thus, for instance, one would write Kampania Ala Gore'a for “Al Gore's campaign”. In this example, “Ala” is spelt without an apostrophe, as its spelling and pronunciation fit into normal Polish rules. “Gore'a”, however, needs it, as “e” disappears from the pronunciation, changing its inflection pattern. There is a widespread misunderstanding of this rule, which would rather have apostrophe after all foreign words, regardless of their pronunciation, thus rendering the above into (incorrect) Kampania Al'a Gore'a. This effect is somewhat akin to the greengrocers' apostrophes (see above).

• In Turkish, proper nouns are capitalized and an apostrophe is inserted between the noun and any following suffix, e.g. New York'da, “in New York”, in contrast with okulda, “in the school”.

As a mark of palatalization

Some languages and transliteration systems use the apostrophe to mark the presence, or the lack of palatalization.

• In the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages, the apostrophe is used between a consonant and the following “soft” (iotified) vowel (е, ё, є, ю, я) to indicate that no palatalization of the preceding consonant takes place, and the vowel is pronounced in the same way as at the beginning of the word. The same function is served by the hard sign in some other Cyrillic alphabets.

• In some transliterations from the Cyrillic alphabet (of Belarusian, Russian, or Ukrainian language), the apostrophe is used to replace the soft sign (ь, indicating palatalization of the preceding consonant), e.g., Русь is transliterated Rus' according to the BGN/PCGN system. Confusingly, some of these transliteration schemes use a double apostrophe ( ˮ ) to represent the apostrophe in Cyrillic text, e.g. Ukrainian слов'янське (“Slavic”) is transliterated as slovˮyans'ke.

• Some Karelian orthographies use an apostrophe to indicate palatalization, e.g. n'evvuo “to give advice”, d'uuri “just (like)”, el'vüttiä “to revive”.

As a glottal stop

See also: Okina and Saltillo (linguistics)

Other languages and transliteration systems use the apostrophe as a letter, denoting the glottal stop.

• Guarani, where it is called puso /ˈpuso/, as in the words ñe'ẽ, ka'a, a' ỹ.

• Hawaiian, the ʻokina (ʻ), an inverted apostrophe, is often rendered as ('). It is considered a letter of the alphabet.

• In the Tongan language, the apostrophe is called a faka'ua and is the last letter of the alphabet. It is used to represent the glottal stop.

• Various other Austronesian languages, such as Samoan, Tahitian and Chamorro.

• Tetum, one of the official languages of East Timor.

• The Brazilian native Tupi language.

• Mayan.

• The constructed Klingon language.

The apostrophe represents sounds similar to the glottal stop in the Turkic languages and in romanizations of Arabic. Sometimes this function is performed by the opening single quotation mark.

Other uses

• In the Czech and Slovak languages, common typographic rendering (at least for some typefaces) of caron over lowercase t, d, l, and uppercase L consonants (ď, ť, ľ, Ľ) looks a lot like an apostrophe, but it is incorrect to use apostrophe instead (compare previous example with incorrect d', t', l', L' or d', t', l', L'). In Slovak, there is also l with acute accent (ĺ, Ĺ). In Slovak, it is used to indicate elision in certain words (tys' as an abbreviated form of ty si), however, these elisions are restricted to poetry.

• In Finnish, one of the consonant gradation patterns is the change of a 'k' into a hiatus, e.g. keko → keon “a pile → pile's”. This hiatus has to be indicated in spelling with an apostrophe, if a long vowel or a diphthong would be immediately followed by the final vowel, e.g. ruoko → ruo'on, vaaka → vaa'an. (This is in contrast to compound words, where the same problem is solved with a hyphen, e.g. maa-ala “land area”.) The same meaning for an apostrophe, a hiatus, is used in poetry to indicate contractions, e.g. miss' on for missä on “where is”.

• In the Breton language, the combination c'h is used for the sound /x/ as English “Loch Ness” whereas ch denotes the sound /ʃ/ as in French or as in English “chic” or “Chicago”.

• In Swahili, an apostrophe after ng says that the g-sound after the /ŋ/ sound is not audible, that is, that the ng is pronounced as in English “singer”, not as in English “finger”.

• In Jèrriais, one of the uses of the apostrophe is to mark gemination, or consonant length. For example, t't represents /tː/, s's /sː/, n'n /nː/, th'th /ðː/, and ch'ch /ʃː/ (as contrasted to /t/, /s/, /n/, /ð/, and /ʃ/).

• In the Hànyǔ Pīnyīn system of romanization for Standard Mandarin (the main Chinese language), the apostrophe is sometimes used to separate syllables in a word where ambiguity could arise. Example: the standard romanization for the name of the city Xi'an includes an apostrophe to distinguish it from a single-syllable word xian.

• In Hebrew, the apostrophe is used to modify letters to make sounds that Hebrew has no letters for. Sounds such as “j”, “th”, and “ch” are made from ג, ת, and צ with an apostrophe (or chupchik). Thus, the name Jarred can be spelled ג'רד in Hebrew.

• In the new Uzbek Latin alphabet adopted in 2000, the apostrophe serves as a diacritical mark to distinguish different phonemes written with the same letter: it differentiates o’ (corresponding to Cyrillic ў) from o, and g’ (Cyrillic ғ) from g. This avoids the use of special characters, allowing Uzbek to be typed with ease in ordinary ASCII on any Latin keyboard. In addition, a postvocalic apostrophe in Uzbek represents the glottal stop phoneme derived from Arabic hamzah or ‘ayn, replacing Cyrillic ъ.

Typographic form

The form of the apostrophe originates in manuscript writing, as a point with a downwards tail curving clockwise. This form was inherited by the typographic (or typeset) apostrophe ( ’ ), also called the “curly apostrophe”. Later sans-serif typefaces had stylized apostrophes with a more geometric or simplified form, but usually retaining the same directional bias as a closing quotation mark.

With the invention of the typewriter, a “neutral” quotation mark form ( ' ) was created to economize on the keyboard, by using a single key to represent the apostrophe, both opening and closing single quotation marks, and single primes. This is known as the “typewriter apostrophe” or “vertical apostrophe”.

Computing

Typewriter apostrophe and ASCII encoding

The typewriter apostrophe ( ' ) was inherited by computer keyboards, and is the only apostrophe character available in the (7-bit) ASCII character encoding, which is the original basis for the computer representation of the Latin alphabet.

As such, it is a highly overloaded character. In ASCII, it represents a right single quotation mark, left single quotation mark, apostrophe, vertical line or prime (punctuation marks), or an apostrophe modifier or acute accent (modifier letters). (The separate ASCII grave accent ( ` ), intended as a modifier and assigned its own key on many keyboards, has sometimes found a non-standard role as a single opening quote.)

Typographic apostrophe and 8-bit encodings

Support for the typographic apostrophe ( ’ ) was introduced in a variety of 8-bit character encodings, such as the Apple Macintosh operating system's Mac Roman character set (in 1984), and later in the CP1252 encoding of Microsoft Windows.

Older 8-bit character encodings, like Windows CP1252, Mac Roman or ISO-8859-1, universally support the typewriter quote in the same position, 39, inherited from ASCII (as does Unicode; see below). However, most of them place the typographic apostrophe in different positions. ISO-8859-1, a common encoding used for web pages, omits the typographic apostrophe altogether.

Microsoft Windows CP1252 (sometimes incorrectly called ANSI or ISO-Latin) is a duplicate of ISO-8859-1, with 27 additional characters in the place of control characters (in the range from 128 to 159). Microsoft software usually treats ISO-8859-1 as if it were CP1252. The wide adoption of Microsoft's web browser and web server has forced many other software makers to adopt this as a de facto convention – in some cases contravening established standards unnecessarily (e.g., some applications use CP1252 character values in HTML numeric references, where Unicode values are required, and would be sufficient for interoperation with MS software). Consequently, the typographic apostrophe and several other characters are handled inconsistently by web browsers and other software, and can cause interoperation problems.

Unicode

There are three types of apostrophe character in Unicode:

• ( ' ) Vertical typewriter apostrophe (Unicode name “apostrophe” or “apostrophe-quote”), U+0027, inherited from ASCII.
• ( ’ ) Punctuation apostrophe (“right single quotation mark” or “single comma quotation mark”), U+2019. Serves as both an apostrophe and closing single quotation mark.
• ( ʼ ) Letter apostrophe (“modifier letter apostrophe”), U+02BC. This is preferred when the apostrophe is not considered punctuation which separates letters, but a letter in its own right. Examples occur in the Cyrillic Azerbaijani alphabet, or in some transliterations such as the transliterated Arabic glottal stop, hamza, or transliterated Cyrillic soft sign. (The Hawaiian glottal stop, the ʻokina, has its own Unicode character at U+02BB.) As the letter apostrophe is seldom used in practice, the Unicode standard cautions that one should never assume text is coded thus. The letter apostrophe is rendered identically to the punctuation apostrophe in the Unicode code charts.

The Nenets language has single and double letter apostrophes:

• ( ˮ ) Double letter apostrophe (Unicode name “modifier letter double apostrophe”), U+02EE.

Usage

Historically, the majority of computer users outside the world of professional typesetting and graphic design have tended to use the typewriter quote for an apostrophe. However, because these are now often “transparently” converted to typographic apostrophes by desktop publishing software (see below), the typographic apostrophe does often appear in documents produced by non-professionals.

Because of the egalitarian nature of electronic publishing on the Internet, and the low resolution of computer monitors in comparison to print, typewriter apostrophes have been considered tolerable on Web pages. More recently, due to the wide adoption of the Unicode text encoding standard, near-universal Web browser support, higher-resolution displays, and advanced anti-aliasing of text in modern operating systems, the use of typographic apostrophes is becoming more common the Web. With the spread of Unicode support in computer operating systems and Internet software, the typographic apostrophe can be used nearly anywhere. Nevertheless, the tradition of using the typewriter apostrophe continues in many situations. In particular, it is used in the majority of English Wikipedia articles.

Entering typographic apostrophes

The typographic apostrophe does not have its own key on standard computer keyboards. To make the character easier to enter, publishing software often converts typewriter apostrophes to typographic apostrophes during text entry (with or without the user being aware of it). A similar facility may be offered on web servers after submitting text in a form field, e.g. on weblogs or free encyclopedias. This is known as the “smart quotes” feature; apostrophes and quotation marks that are not automatically altered by computer programs are known as “dumb quotes”.

Unfortunately, such conversion is not always done in accordance with the standards for character sets and encodings. Additionally, many such software programs incorrectly convert a leading apostrophe to an opening quotation mark (e.g., in abbreviations of years: ‘04 rather than the correct ’04 for 2004). A quick way to get the correct result in Microsoft Word is to type two apostrophes (sometimes using a space as well, as required), and then simply delete the first. Smart quote features also often fail to recognise situations when a prime rather than an apostrophe is needed; for example, incorrectly rendering the latitude 49° 53′ 08″ as 49° 53’ 08”.

On Microsoft Windows, Unicode special characters can be entered explicitly by holding the ALT key and typing the four-digit decimal code position of the character. An apostrophe is entered by holding alt while typing 8217 on the numeric keypad (at the right side of a standard keyboard). (Typing a three-digit code will enter a character value in the current code page, which may not correspond to its Unicode value.)

On the Apple Macintosh, special characters are typed while holding down the option key, or option and shift keys together. In Macintosh English-language keyboard layouts, an apostrophe is typed with the shortcut option-shift-] .

Bibliography

• Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: Modern Language Association, 2003.
• Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, 2003. Gotham Books, Toronto (North American edition). ISBN 1-59240-087-6

See also

• Caron
• Possessive case
• Elision
• Contraction

External links

• The Apostrophe Protection Society
• The Apostrophe Abolition Campaign
• ASCII and Unicode quotation marks
• Apostrophe and acute accent confusion
• Grammar 101: The Apostrophe
• Apostrophe usage: when do I use the stupid thing's?
• A cartoon critique of the greengrocers' apostrophe (GIF)
• ApostropheGuide.com - quick guide to using apostrophes
• The Dreaded Apostrophe - An approach using a single rule only