Do you see what I did in the title? There’s an apostrophe in the word apostrophe. It’s there for a particular purpose—in this case, to denote possession. I could also write this as ‘the place of the apostrophe’ as it would be said in some other languages like Spanish, but the apostrophe is a shortcut we Americans like to use. The problem of using an apostrophe comes when you put one in a word when you shouldn’t. Most commonly this is done when making a word plural.

Rule: Never* use an apostrophe to make a simple word plural!

An example: Mom’s and Dad’s work hard.

I shudder even writing that sentence. It should be: Moms and Dads work hard. All the unnecessary little apostrophes (see how I used it correctly there?) make me ever so slightly violent. I want to take a purple pen (because I don’t like red) and mark them all out. It’s actually funny that so many people add an apostrophe unnecessarily when our culture’s language seems to be going the way of reducing the number of letters and punctuation marks we use, especially in digital communication.

Apostrophes are used to show possession—Rose’s cat—or that a letter or letters have been removed from a word or words—that’s for that is, or ’til for until. People likely started overusing apostrophes because English grammar rules can be confusing and they feel over-correcting is better than under. I’m not sure I agree, though I have a struggle with commas. I tend to want to add them in places I feel warrant a pause, but then I look back and realize it’s too busy. I just want people to read what I write exactly as it sounds in my head!

I hope knowing this rule makes your life a little simpler, knowing you can actually leave out that apostrophe the majority of the time. Especially if you insist on leaving out half of your letters. Although, then you might need the apostrophe anyway, so just ignore all of this.

 

*There are a few exceptions, as with most grammar rules.  https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp