5.6: Introduction to Apostrophes and Quotation Marks
What you’ll learn to do: analyze the use of apostrophes
When you send a text message, you probably don’t bother with apostrophes, right? It makes sense that we might not worry about properly punctuating possessives and contractions in a text message, but it’s very important to remember to use apostrophes correctly in other writing situations.
Academics frequently debate whether or not text messaging is going to kill the poor apostrophe. In his essay “Dear Apostrophe: C Ya,” Rob Jenkins (2012) writes, “[O]ne of my professors, talking about the way language evolves over time, predicted that the next evolutionary stage would involve common punctuation marks. Specifically, he said, the apostrophe would eventually cease to exist” (para. 1).
We’ll see what the future holds, but the apostrophe is still standard usage. This section will help you understand and apply standard uses of apostrophes.
Contributors and Attributions
- OWL at Excelsior College: Grammar Essentials: Apostrophes . Provided by : Excelsior College . Located at : http://owl.excelsior.edu/grammar-essentials/punctuation/apostrophes/ . Project : OWL at Excelsior College. License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
- Revision and adaptation. Provided by : University of Mississippi. License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
- Image of people texting. Authored by : Dean Moriarty. Located at : pixabay.com/photos/texting-mobile-phones-hands-two-1490691/. License : Other . License Terms : pixabay.com/service/terms/#license