As a literary device, apostrophe refers to a speech or address to a person who is not present or to a personified object, such as Yorick's skull in Hamlet. Usage is variable and inconsistent. Sciences, Culinary Arts and Personal Barclays is no longer associated with the family name. it designates the combined set of Jack's children and Jill's children. Example 8: Sire (By W. S. Merwin)Another apostrophe example comes from the poem Sire, written by W. S. Merwin: “Forerunner, I would like to say, silent pilot,Little dry death, future,Your indirections are as strange to meAs my own. Then I’ll be brief. The cases where the apostrophe is not an abbreviation for, CMOS, 7.25: "If plural compounds pose problems, opt for. Visit the Literary Elements Lesson Plans & Resources page to learn more. You can test out of the [42] 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 so as not to show ownership of the place. Enter your email address to receive new posts in your inbox. For example, in the expressions "the school's headmaster", "the men's department", and "tomorrow's weather", the school does not own/possess the headmaster, men don't own/possess the department, and tomorrow does not/will not own the weather.

Similar examples of notable names ending in an s that are often given a possessive apostrophe with no additional s include Dickens and Williams. The word apostrophe comes from the Greek word “apostrophé” which means “turning back” which is a common term in Greek literary drama and works such as in Homer’s Odyssey. However, in that novel’s case, the apostrophe was used to refer to times when a rather impersonal narrator intrudes in the storyline to provide additional information or some sort of commentary. Since you are talking to an object that is not capable of replying you back or even digest what you have said, it can be considered as an apostrophe. As in the example above, one of the speakers turns away from addressing another character or the audience and instead addresses a third party. The purpose of an apostrophe in literature is to direct the reader’s attention to something other than the person who’s speaking. Apostrophe are also found in songs lyrics. In Microsoft Word it is possible to turn smart quotes off (in some versions, by navigating through Tools, AutoCorrect, AutoFormat as you type, and then unchecking the appropriate option). In Visual Basic (and earlier Microsoft BASIC dialects such as QuickBASIC) an apostrophe is used to denote the start of a comment. [86] Hyperforeignism has been formalised in some pseudo-anglicisms. Of course, we’d talk to our coffee. Others prefer to add 's: for convenience's sake. The activities in this lesson will encourage your students to understand apostrophe as a literary device. 450-1100)-language text, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2006, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Articles containing Chinese-language text, Articles containing Catalan-language text, Articles containing Albanian-language text, Articles containing Afrikaans-language text, Articles containing Italian-language text, Articles containing Esperanto-language text, Articles containing Galician-language text, Articles containing Luganda-language text, Articles containing Norwegian-language text, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from June 2018, Articles containing Portuguese-language text, Articles containing Swedish-language text, Articles containing Finnish-language text, Articles containing Guarani-language text, Articles containing Ukrainian-language text, Articles containing Karelian-language text, Articles containing Estonian-language text, Articles containing Turkish-language text, Articles containing Slovene-language text, Articles containing Swahili (macrolanguage)-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, The marking of the omission of one or more letters (as in the. [92] Hubert Selby Jr. used a slash instead of an apostrophe mark for contractions and did not use an apostrophe at all for possessives. Most disagreements about the use of possessive forms of nouns and of the apostrophe are due to the erroneous opinion that a term should not use an apostrophe if it does not express possession. If making one is still quite difficult for you, there’s no need to worry about. They are tired of being outside and tell him that they want to be moved. And no, this is not the symbol that is placed on top before the “s” indicating possession. [99] The Apostrophe Protection Society, founded by retired journalist John Richards in 2001, was brought to a full stop in 2019, Richards (then aged 96) accepting that "the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won!".[100]. Later sans-serif typefaces had stylised apostrophes with a more geometric or simplified form, but usually retaining the same directional bias as a closing quotation mark. Such conversion is not always correct. First, remember those times you complained to your car when it refuses to start or those moments you begged to it to work long enough to take you to your office, the apostrophe was there. Unicode defines three apostrophe characters:[4]. For example, in Dutch, the apostrophe is inserted before the s when pluralising most words ending in a vowel or y for example, baby's (English babies) and radio's (English radios). What is apostrophe? [9][failed verification], In the words of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage:[10]. You’ll look great with my black plaid skirt.”. Truss says this usage is no longer considered proper in formal writing. Used across genres and in literature from different time periods and cultures, apostrophe is what happens when a character speaks to a dead or imaginary character or to an inanimate object. In this poem/nursery rhyme, a child is the persona of the poem. [16][17] The inflection of both is normally preferred (e.g. Some languages, such as Perl, PHP, and many shell languages, treat single quoted strings as "raw" strings, while double quoted strings have expressions (such as "$variable") replaced with their values when interpreted. In Microsoft Word for Windows, holding down the Control key while typing two apostrophes will produce a single typographic apostrophe. But talking to Yorick’s skull made Hamlet contemplative of the concept of death and decay, two things he just held in his hands.

This lesson offers a variety of activities designed to help your students better understand the use and meaning of literary apostrophe. In the HTML entity ’ the rsquo is short for right single quotation mark.

This often produces so-called "Dunglish" errors when carried over into English. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. The main function of an apostrophe is to personify absent things or non-existent ideas to bring them to life.

UK supermarket chain Tesco omits the mark where standard practice would require it. Oh, trees, how majestic you are as you throw down your golden leaves. To make typographic apostrophes easier to enter, word processing and publishing software often convert typewriter apostrophes to typographic apostrophes during text entry (at the same time converting opening and closing single and double quotes to their standard left-handed or right-handed forms).



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