How to use apostrophes | Using apostrophes | English punctuation

hello everyone this is Andrew from crown Academy of English and I'm here again for another free English lesson for you all today we're going to be looking at apostrophes so it's going to be a punctuation lesson because apostrophes is a very common source of mistake even by English people so I think it's very important to have a look at to have a look at this in closer detail so let's get started well first of all what is an apostrophe well the easiest way is to look at a few real-life examples so I found some photographs of some signs in shops these are authentic proper signs in in shops which have used apostrophes so let's have a look so here's the here's the first one hotel is not responsible for your vehicle or its contents okay so this is the apostrophe here and you see it it goes usually at the the top of a word and it separates two letters so here it is separating the T and the S okay let's have a look at another example so this is a sign in a in a snack shop in a food shop a restaurant so they're selling sandwiches baguettes and cakes and this is the apostrophe right here between the e and the S and here between the Enes so let's have a look at some more examples and again in a sandwich shop this sign says try our new paninis chicken artichoke or meatball and again this is the apostrophe right here so there we've seen three real life signs in shops showing real examples of the use of apostrophes but all of those signs were wrong okay I don't know if you noticed it if you did notice that well congratulations but all three of those signs were using sorry they had an incorrect use of the apostrophes okay so those were remember those were proper professional signs these shops had paid money for these signs and they made a mistake and in 2008 in England there were 2,000 people were given a test to see if they know sorry to see if they knew how to use put apostrophes so they were given a test to say here are some questions are these sentences right or wrong and the results were very surprising because 46% of the people failed the test so almost half of the people in England so that is their first language their maternal mother tongue their first language is English and they do not know how to use apostrophes so that is why it is so important this lesson is so important okay because it is often a source of confusion a lot of people make a lot of mistakes using apostrophes when really there is no reason really it is quite a simple it is a simple grammar rule but you just have to know the rule okay so that is the objective of the lesson today is to make sure that you you understand apostrophes and to make sure that you do not that you are not part of this 46% okay I would like you all to be part of the 54% who do know how to use apostrophes so let's start so apostrophes there are three main uses there are three situations in which we use apostrophes and we're going to look at them one by one first of all missing letters so we use apostrophes to indicate missing letters from a contracted form I think it will be easier if I just show you some examples so an example would be instead of saying I am so you can say I am or you can write I am but sometimes we want to have a contracted form and the contracted form would be I'm so I am usually when we say it in informal speech we would say I'm for example I could say I am hungry and we would say I'm hungry so this is the apostrophe in red and the apostrophe is there to indicate that there is a letter which is missing and the lesser which is missing is the letter A so to indicate that the letter A is missing we put we use an apostrophe okay so that's quite simple so far so that is the first use of the apostrophe the second use is we use apostrophes before or after the possessive s ending of nouns so again that's this a bit complicated so it's easier if I show you an example example Andrews car is a Ferrari well I wish it was so what this means is is that Andrew he has a car okay so the car belongs to Andrew so what we're saying here is it's the car of Andrew in other languages in other European languages and I'm sure many other languages all over the world you know the language as you say the car of Andrew well in English we don't say that we say Andrews car so Andrews car is a Ferrari so the car belongs to Andrew so the apostrophe here indicates that andrew has a car and that the car belongs to Andrew okay so it's possession Andrew possesses a car okay and the third use and this is a very minor use it's a very small use is that a few plurals not many and we'll see later on in the lesson but there are one or two exceptions for plurals where we are authorised where we are allowed to use apostrophes and an example would be when we want to discuss a single letter so if we want to say several letter E's for example we can put an apostrophe before the letter S so the sentence here is there are two E's in the word career okay because if we do not have the apostrophe then it it looks a bit strange it's difficult to understand what we are saying because we can see a letter e and an S and we and we don't know what it means anyway each of these three uses so missing letters possessives and special plurals we are now going to look at them one by one in more detail so I'm going to give you just a few more details and it's a bit more information on each of these three so let's start with missing letters so let's start at the top of the screen so as we said before we use apostrophes to indicate missing letters from contracted forms and here are some very common examples there are many more but these are the most common ones I think for example I am tired is the full form and in the contracted form we say I'm tired so this is the apostrophe and the apostrophe is there to indicate that the letter a is missing next one I have a sore throat in the contracted form we can say I've a sore throat I've a sore throat and again the apostrophe here is to show that we are missing some letters and in fact here we are missing two letters we are missing the h and the a the third example is it is an important day and in the contracted form this is it's an important day and the apostrophe is indicating that we are missing the letter I so it is is missing here is the train here's the Train the are not barking the dogs aren't barking where is Andrew where's Andrew Isabelle does not love him Isabelle doesn't love him so in the last one this is a negative and the apostrophe is showing that there is the letter O which is missing from the word not okay I have done a separate lesson d the rules for how we create a contracted form it's it's quite a long there's quite a few rules for that and it is not the objective of today's lesson so I've done a separate lesson which I will upload very soon for discussing the contracted forms in more details but what is important to understand for this lesson is that apostrophes are the use of apostrophes to indicate missing letters that is one of the uses of apostrophes okay that is the the purpose of today's lesson so if you understand that then then that's great now if you look at the bottom what is important here is contracted forms so all of these sentences here on the right hand side they are common and correct in informal writing to show in formal speech so this is how we would speak in English this is very often how everyone speaks because it's quicker and easier to say I'm rather than I am I am it's two words it's two syllables and here it's I'm it's much quicker so this is used in informal speech and in formal writing but if you are writing formally for example if you are writing a letter for to a company or for a job application or you are writing to a newspaper for example then we do not usually use the contracted form it is better to use the full form on the left hand side it is better it sounds it it's better to write that it's better when we're reading it so moving on so now we're looking at the possessive use so we're now looking at the second type of use of apostrophes and here there are about four or five different examples so it's about four or five pages here so the first one is we use apostrophes before or after the possessive s ending of nouns again it's easier if I show you an example example one a single owner so if we want to indicate possession of a single noun then we add an apostrophe followed by the letter s to the owner example I have a dog I have one dog and my dog has a tail here it is his tail and this is the dog so my dog has a tail so if we want to talk about the tail we say my dog's tail so my dog is single it's a singular owner so we follow this rule here so if you look here we have added an apostrophe in red like we said here add an apostrophe and after the apostrophe we add a letter s and that's what we can see here in the rule and we add the letter s to the owner the owner is the dog because the dog is the owner of the tail so in a singular form when we have one dog we add an apostrophe to the end of the word and after the apostrophe we add the S ok so that is the basic rule for singular nouns another example would be that America has a president and so we would say America's president so it's the president of America America is singular there is only one America and so we add an apostrophe and then we add the S ok let's now look at plurals okay so we're now looking at plural nouns and so for plurals we add an apostrophe after the S ok so because a plural word already has an S at the end all we need to do is to add an apostrophe after that s example so in the field there are three horses so the horses within s because it's plural the horses have a field okay so if we now want to talk about the field we would say the horses field okay and if you can see here so the horse is it's the same word as here in the original sentence and we just add the apostrophe to the end of the word but we do not add another s on to the end okay so this is this rule here to show ownership of several owners you add an apostrophe after the S so that's what we've done we've added an apostrophe after the S the horses field and these two are wrong so this is to show you what would be wrong so this one the this line here the horses is filled I mean that is just completely completely wrong listen we're mixing different rules and exceptions here this is we've added an apostrophe and also an S and we don't we do not do that that is wrong and the third line here the horse is filled this would be correct if there was only one horse in the field if if the field only belonged to one horse there was only one horse who had her field that would be correct okay so this is the singular this is the singular owner but this is wrong because here we have three horses okay and this one is also wrong the horses field there is no apostrophe here at all but that is wrong because we must use an apostrophe to show possession so that is wrong this is just a plural in fact the horses this is just a normal plural example three irregular plural possessives okay so in English there are some words which are plural but they do not end in the letter S and so there's a special rule for that case we do not use this rule in that case we have a we have a slightly different rule so for those cases for a noun which is plural but which does not end in an S we in fact treat it like it was a singular so we add an apostrophe and then the letter S example the children such plural the children one child one child together make two children so one child one child two children so children is plural but there is no F okay so it's an irregular plural the children they have a computer that the children have a computer and we treat it like it was a singular so we use the rule that we saw on the previous screen with the dog's tail it's the same rule the children's computer apostrophe s at the end but the meaning is obviously still plural we're talking about the computer which belongs to to several people so to till two children because children is plural so to two to several child's but we don't say Charles we say children and so this is to show this is wrong this would this is an example of the rule that we saw at the top so this is the rule for if it was a regular plural so that is wrong because this is children is an irregular plural so we do not follow this rule and the children's computer without any ' that is wrong because we must use an apostrophe to indicate possession that's a mistake this is the final liner I've made a mistake this is the same the second line and the fourth line that they're the same so the Rob they're both wrong they're both wrong it's just a duplicate I've made a duplicate that okay so some more possessive uses alright so when we have two people who share something together as a couple so if there are two people who share the same thing we only use one apostrophe example so there's Kate and William Kate and William's wedding okay so there are two people two separate people and they are sharing the same wedding okay so they both have a wedding which belongs to them it is their wedding it's William it's a wedding of William and it is a wedding of Kate and the wedding is the same one it's the same wedding for William as the same wedding for Kate so when that is the case when they are sharing the same thing we only use an apostrophe on the second word okay we only need to put your posture fee on William we do not we do not put the apostrophe here on Kate so we do not say we do not need to put an apostrophe here we do not need to say Kate and William's wedding because it's the same wedding for both of them so we only need to say Kate and William's wedding and Kate and William's wedding with the apostrophe after the word well that is just completely wrong because that suggests that there is more than one William and I don't think Kate is married more than one William well at least she hasn't told us so so that is grammatically wrong this is this is that is why this is wrong a slightly different situation would be when two different people own things but they are owned owning them separately so as individuals if they own things separately then we use two apostrophes example again we've got Kate and William and if we want to talk about their clothes so we want to say Kate and William's clothes this would be correct because as you can see the clothes of William and the clothes of Kate the clothes are different for the clothes of William are different to the clothes of Kate you can see William he's wearing a suit and Kate is wearing a dress so they own things but separately they own the same they own clothes that have clothes but Williams clothes are different to Kate's clothes so to indicate that in written English or spoken English as well we have to put two apostrophes in the sentence one on each noun that is why this one is wrong okay so Kate and William's clothes this line this is the same as at the top of the screen this is this rule at the top so this sentence if you see that that is indicating that Kate and William have exactly the same clothes which is wrong and this is wrong at the bottom Kate's and William's clothes well there's no apostrophe there at all and that is wrong we must use an apostrophe to show possession okay there's a slight exception for when there is a personal name so a name of somebody that ends in an S an example would be excuse me and an example would be a name like Charles okay the name is Charles and there is already an S at the end but obviously Charles is singular because it's only one person so it's a it's a different situation so let's look at how we managed us well we use an apostrophe we we treat it as though it's just a normal singular noun so we use an apostrophe followed by an S in the case where you would normally pronounce the extra s if you said the word out loud now what do I mean by that well let's have a look at an example so you can see this line here this sentence here and when we say this okay when we say this we say if we want to say the car of Charles in using a possessive using an apostrophe with the possessive we would say Charles's Charles's car okay so we actually hear the second s we would say Charles is so because of that so that's this is the bit where we're saying where you would naturally pronounce an extra s well that is the case we would naturally pronounce this s so in that case we are allowed to use an apostrophe and we add the S on and it's the same for the word for the name Frances okay so Frances in a singular or Frances without any possession we would say Frances and when we want to discuss the wife of Francis we would actually pronounce this second s we would say Francis's wife Francis is wise it's quite difficult to say but we do say that second s so that is why we use an apostrophe and we add the S so it's exactly as though it's exactly the same as a singular noun okay so this rule here is it's exactly like a singular noun so exactly like the dog's tail that we saw earlier okay it's the same rule but there are some personal names where it doesn't sound right it sounds wrong if we pronounce that final s it's too difficult to say it's too difficult to say sometimes that final s and in that case we do not add the S at the end we just add the apostrophe so and an example would be if we wanted to talk about the best match of Jimmy Connors so in the singular sorry in without the possession without the possess possession we would say Jimmy Connors and if we want to discuss the best match of Jimmy Connors we do not say Jimmy Connors O's okay try to say it try to say Jimmy Connors it's impossible to say and it doesn't sound right it sounds wrong it's too long it's it's too complicated so we do not so since we do not say the final s we do not write it either okay so that is the the logic behind the rule okay we do not say the final s so we do not write it so Jimmy Connors best match was against John McEnroe so these were obviously both famous tennis players times so we use apostrophes sometimes to discuss times or periods so if an expression of time has some sort of a possessive meaning then we use apostrophes let me show you an example okay so if we want to discuss let's look at the brackets first if we want to discuss something which is an experience that lasts two months for example someone somebody has some work experience someone has worked as [Music] secretary somebody works as a secretary and they have done that for two for two months we could say so that would be one way of saying that would be they have an experience of two months so because this is okay to say experience of two months we can in fact use an apostrophe form we are allowed then to say two months experience and since months is plural we used a plural noun rule to write the apostrophe so we put the apostrophe at the after the final s and we do not add any more s's okay so two months experience one months experience so one month is singular by definition because it's just one so one months experience and there we were putting in apostrophe before the S because this is singular okay singular so we used a singular noun rule we put an apostrophe at the end of the word and we add an S and this is grammatically fine this is grammatically correct because it is okay to say experience of one month this sounds right this is a valid sentence in English but we cannot say eight months when we say eight months pregnant it's wrong to use an apostrophe okay we can we say eight months pregnant but we do not write it with an apostrophe and the reason is the the rule behind it is because there is no possession in fact here there's no concept of pregnant of eight months that just does not make sense that it doesn't mean anything pregnant of eight months that is not something that we would say in English it's just it's nonsense alright so this example here eight months pregnant there is no possessive there's no idea or concept of possession all right so we use apostrophes to indicate possession here there is no possession so we do not use an apostrophe so the correct way of writing this is without the apostrophe eight months pregnant alright now this section here of when not to use an apostrophe for possession this is probably one of the most important parts of today of today's lesson because this is where most people make a mistake okay so let's have a look at this we do not use apostrophes with any possessive personal pronoun now the possessive personal pronouns they are the words like my your his/her/its our and there whenever we use these words we never never ever use an apostrophe the reason is because apostrophe we are using an apostrophe to indicate possession well all of these words all possessive personal pronouns they implicitly indicate possession okay it is implied by their very use so by definition we already know that there is possession because that is the meaning of all of these words my for example my car well the car belongs to me that's what the word my means it means it's the car of me so we do not have to indicate it a second time using an apostrophe it's it's it's irrelevant so when we say I like my car we write it like this we there's no need for an apostrophe or no need for a letter S or no need for s apostrophe we just write it I like are the same for your you say where is your home no apostrophe but this one still means possession it means where is the home of you in fact but we never say the home of you we say where is your home and so his dog okay that is wrong because there's an apostrophe though we do not write the apostrophe so even though there is a letter S at the end that makes no difference we still write it without the letter we saw it without the apostrophe so we write it like this his dog no apostrophe that is correct now the next one is the most important okay this next one is where most people make the most mistakes okay so let's look at this this is probably the most important part of the lesson let's look at this sentence first of all let's look at the first part it's time to go to work okay can you see here there is an apostrophe it's time to work it's time to go to work we have we have used an apostrophe between the letter T and the letter S but let's remember that is an example of the contracted form we are using an apostrophe here because it is the contracted form we are missing a letter so here the meaning of it is it is we are missing the letter I so that is why it is correct here to use an apostrophe for its so it's time to go to work but my car has a problem okay so the car has a problem now this is important that its battery is flat so what is what is flat well it's the battery of the car the battery of the car is flat so it is indicating the possession between the car and the battery okay so it's the battery of the car so the car has the battery that is the possession so this here it's it's this it's here this is an example of a possessive personal pronoun possessive personal pronoun and as we've seen here the rule for possessive personal pronouns is that do not use apostrophes here the word it's it's exactly the same as the word his it's well it's not the same meaning but it's an equivalent it's it's it's also similar to the word your my and as we've seen here for my and your and his we do not use an apostrophe well it's exactly the same for the word its when it is being used as a possessive personal pronoun this is a big source of mistake because people confuse this version of it's with this meaning of it's okay so my advice to you would be when you hear the word it's or when you are considering using the word it's stop and think why what is the meaning what I what are you trying to say if you are using it as if there is a missing letter in the word it's in other words if you are saying it is something if you're using the verb to be then yes you are okay to use an apostrophe but if the meaning of the word it's if the it's is referring to possession between two nouns in this example the car and the battery the car has a battery the battery of the car then in that case it's is it's not the verb to be it is in fact a possessive personal pronoun and so we do not use an apostrophe okay if you can remember this rule okay you will be better than 46% of the English okay because in that test that I told you about at the beginning where 46% of the English people do not know how to use apostrophes this is where they made the mistake okay they're very a very common mistake so this is so that obviously this one is correct and we've seen why it's correct and this is wrong okay and with justice we've just explained why it's wrong okay because here with an apostrophe that is indicating that there is a missing letter but there isn't a missing letter we're not we're not saying it is battery we're saying the battery of the car so that is wrong this is not a possessive personal pronoun when it's written with an apostrophe okay so the final slide is just to look at those very few cases where plurals will use an apostrophe and there are only two situations and the first one is plural of single letters so for example if we wanted to say to somebody find all the letter C's in the word accommodation then we may we can use an apostrophe to separate the letter C from the letter S and the reason we do that is simply to separate it physically so that it is easier to read okay so imagine if there was no apostrophe there you've found all the CS you know you might say find all the CS and you don't know what that means so we put we are allowed to insert an apostrophe to separate the two letters so that we understand that we're talking about several letter C's okay and it's exactly the same for single numbers okay so for example you could say to somebody if they if they don't write very well if they write badly you would say to them it is you would write it is difficult to read your eights and there we use an apostrophe to separate the number eight from the letter S so it's easier than to say that it's in the plural otherwise it would be it's difficult to read your 8s and we don't know what it means it's difficult to interpret okay those two are the only plaus those are the only plurals to use apostrophes okay any other sign that you want to use a noun in the plural form you do not use an apostrophe so for all the other cases all the other situations where you want to use a plural do not use an apostrophe it is wrong and in fact that was the error in the signs that we saw earlier if you remember that they were writing sandwiches with an apostrophe at the end that was wrong they did the same with the word panini they wrote Spani knees okay well pana knees even even the word pana knees is probably wrong because panini is the plural but let's suppose pana knees with an S is correct even then it's just it's only a plural we do not use apostrophes with a plural and so another example where we do not use apostrophes is when we're talking about a year so if 1960 this is not a single number okay it's not a single number so we do not we do not use an apostrophe this is wrong okay there's no need to use ' because it's easy to read if we do not use an apostrophe it's not difficult to read we can see very easily that we're talking about a year so we we would ana plural so we would say the Beatles were famous in the 1960s no problem to say that CDs okay no need for an apostrophe we can see without the apostrophe we can see it's a plural and because we're using a small letter s we can see it is separate from the CD so there is no need for an apostrophe apples it's just a plural we're talking about one apple two apples several apples we're just using a plural there was no possession there are no missing letters so we just need to write apples with an S it's no need at all to use an apostrophe euros okay you often see this mistaken on shop signs or in shops or in stores for some reason shop owners decide to write the word euros with an apostrophe no idea why it's wrong okay there you just used the word without the apostrophe it's just a simple plural there are something costs five euros you just write it without an apostrophe DVDs very similar to the word CDs okay there's no need we it's written in capitals in uppercase and the plural will be in lowercase so there's no need to use an apostrophe we can just type DVD with an S at the end okay out of all of these the it it's as this column here which is the worst in fact it because the apples and euros this column if these are written with an apostrophe it is a very very big mistake cds/dvds it's it is a mistake it's not you know it's not following the rule but it's becoming I suppose it's acceptable it's acceptable it's not a shocking mistake to see this okay you see it a lot but that doesn't make it correct okay but it's not it's not a big mistake I would say it's you know it's not going to be a shocking mistake but if you did it in a grammar test then it would be wrong to be honest all right but this column this is important apples euros chips cars never use an apostrophe never never never use an apostrophe please okay so right at the end now you've seen all the rules so it's your time now to work a little bit so I'm going to give you some questions show you some sentences and you have to decide which sentence is correct and which sentence is wrong example hurry up it's time to go to school so without an apostrophe or do we say it with an apostrophe so which one is correct is it this one or this one so have a little think I'm going to give you five seconds well the answer is this one with an apostrophe and the reason is is because here there is a missing letter isn't there we're saying it is time to go to school it's the verb to be there's no possession we're not saying the time of it I'm saying it is time to go to school it's time to go to school there's a missing letter the letter i' is missing so we must use an apostrophe okay so for the net few questions there about four or five I think there are yes I think there are five questions and I will show you the sentences to choose from and then you will have ten seconds before the answer appears on the screen so if ten seconds is not enough for you then you can pause the video when you see the questions so when you see the sentence this if you do not think ten seconds is long enough then just pause the video otherwise you can just keep playing so question one and the correct one is the first one so my father he has a car just a car of my father and I only have one father okay so father is singular and the rule for a singular noun is to add an apostrophe to the end of the word and then add an S okay so my father's car apostrophe s so this one is wrong and this one is wrong question 2 so it's the last one which is correct and the reason is this because chips well what is it it's just a simple plural there are we are selling several chips when we sell your portion of chips there are several of them it's just a plural there are no missing letters and there's no possession so no need at all to use an apostrophe so this one is wrong and this one is wrong there are apostrophes we do not use apostrophes for plural and here there is a missing letter here there's a missing letter because the sentence the fall sentence would be who is that man with Claire who is the verb to be so there is a missing letter I here so there's a missing letter so we're using apostrophe and this one is wrong because we haven't used an apostrophe when when we we must use an apostrophe so this this is wrong okay so this is an example of the very important one a very important rule that we saw earlier this one is correct in the middle the second sentence I like this restaurant its food is delicious so we are not saying it is food is delicious we're not saying it's not the verb to be so there are no missing letters okay now there is possession there is the idea of possession here we are talking about the food of the restaurant but the noun we are using a personal possessive pronoun okay this is exactly the same as the word my or your or their and as we saw earlier we never use an apostrophe with personal possessive pronouns so that is why this one is correct without the apostrophe and that is why these are wrong so we do not use an apostrophe so this one first one is wrong and this one is wrong as well so here we have photograph of two dogs okay so there are two dogs and they are both playing with their ball this word is important it their boar so they are sharing the ball okay the ball belongs to this dog and the ball also belongs to this dog okay so that is the context for this question okay and so now now that you know that here are the two sentences and it is this one in the middle the second one the dog's ball is yellow so with an apostrophe at the end of the word and there is no s after this this is the rule if you remember this is the rule for plural nouns of indicating possession of a plural noun that ball it's the ball of the dogs with a plural that the ball belongs to this dog and this dog so to indicate the plural we use the apostrophe after the letter s and that is all we do not add an S after that so this one is wrong because this is indicating a single dog so this would be right if there was just one dog on the photograph if there was just this dog on the photograph then this one would be correct and this last one is just wrong on every level this this is just mixing two different rules this is completely wrong at the end so that is it that is the end of this lesson if you enjoyed it please subscribe to my channel and then click on like as well so subscribe please to my channel and then you will be notified of all my other videos and click on like as well it just gives me a bit of encouragement to it shows me that I'm creating good lessons for you I'm creating good videos keeps me motivated and leave a comment as well if you want to leave a comment or ask a question then feel free they are very often apostrophes are usually quite a controversial subject in English grammar it's a very sensitive subject there are even clubs and associations defending the use of apostrophes and pointing out or outlining incorrect you so do a search in Google do a search for incorrect use of apostrophes and you'll see lots of lots of sites which which are talking about this subject and showing lots of signs in shops of incorrect uses of apostrophes it's quite funny so expecting quite a bit of debate perhaps on this video it's but I can guarantee that all the rules I have included in its video are official correct rules of in British English and also American English and I'll give you the sources of those of those grammar rules are gives you the sources of them in the description of the video alright so thanks very much for listening and watching and see you soon bye bye

Channel: Crown Academy of English

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Keywords: how to use apostrophes, using apostrophes, apostrophes, punctuation, english punctuation, learn english, english lessons, english, english grammar lesson, ESL, english grammar lessons, learn english grammar, Crown Academy of English, English Language (Human Language), grammaire anglaise, leçons anglais, puntuacion Inglés, apóstrofes inglés, clases de inglés, دروس في اللغة الإنجليزية

Id: 4ptrjSSxljM

Length: 59min 51sec (3591 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2013