Episode 50 How To Improve Your English Writing - Punctuation Apostrophes

Today we're talking about a tricky punctuation point: apostrophes ' We will be discussing how to use them when we talk about possessive nouns. This episode was particularly tricky for me because, like most native speakers,  I really hate apostrophes! The rules actually aren't that complicated, the trouble is remembering the rules! 😣 See you next week! We often use apostrophes in English to show we have removed some letters, for example 'we are' becomes 'we're'. However today we're specifically talking about using apostrophes with an 's' to show possession. For normal single nouns that are becoming plural we don't need an apostrophe. 1 pencil ➡ 3 pencils However, if that pencil belongs to someone, then I need an apostrophe. 1 pencil belonging to Maeve ➡ Maeve's pencil Several pencils belonging to Maeve ➡ Maeve's pencils Unfortunately at this point I hit an utter blank on ANY English names that end in an S! So we're going with another Harry Potter reference 😌: Sirius Black. If we talk about pencils belonging to Sirius we have two ways we can write that, either: Sirius' pencils OR Sirius's pencils And the pronunciation is the same for both. But remember, because the name ends with an 's' sound, when we add another 's' we need to add another sound: Si ree us ➡ Si ree us is We also have some words that are usually plural. We might say: 'That's an antique' when we're talking about one thing but it's very common to have a shop full of 'antiques' or a person who deals in 'antiques'. For a word like this that already has an 's' apostrophes might be little confusing. If we have an antiques store that belongs to George: George's Antiques Store A better example might be a place that usually has an 's'. In this case the room belongs to the teachers so it's possessive but also there are many teachers using the room, so it's also plural, so we need to put an apostrophe after the 's': Teachers' Lounge If that room only belongs to one teacher it becomes possessive but not plural: English Teacher's room Additional Vocabulary To hate something with a passion - idiom - used fairly casually to mean we really don't like something First things first - idiom - we usually use this when we start talking about something that has several points. Easy peasy - Common collocation, especially in the UK, just affirming that something is really easy. Often used with children, but can also be used with adults to build their confidence that something won't be difficult or that it's possible for them to do it. That's a mouthful! - phrase - often used after we've said something that was difficult to say, such as a tongue twister. Wow! I don't know if you could hear, but this episode had me going round in confusing circles! I hope I've edited out most of my confusion! I wasn't kidding when I said native speakers hate apostrophes!