The apostrophe is used in english to indicate what is, for historical reasons, misleadingly called the possessive case in the english language. Definition and examples of the greengrocers apostrophe. Theres a thing in most languages called noun declension, where the noun changes in some way to indicate its function in the senten. That is the only meaning of that sentence written in that way. Download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets. Last year, the apostrophe protection society was disbanded, having.
An apostrophe is never used when the s simply indicates the plural form of a noun. From the misuse of apostrophes on signs in greengrocers shops. In his book troublesome words, author bill bryson lambastes tesco for this, stating that. This book represents a years thought, squeezed into a months actual work. The marking of the omission of one or more letters. The exceptions to this rule are proper nouns that are latin or greek in origin. The greengrocers apostrophe kindle edition by hickes. The oed online has the following entry for greengrocers apostrophe, suggesting that the naming and shaming of this phenomenon is relatively recent. If you cant use an apostrophe, you dont know your shit mind your. The greengrocers apostrophe kindle edition by hickes, martin, hickes, martin.
Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading the greengrocers apostrophe. Hence, the greengrocer sells tasty apples, juicy pears, and the best bananas. Assuming you mean apostrophe s to indicate possession my fathers car and not contraction hes an idiot. The apostrophe character is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In fact unless you want to be lampooned along with all. The history of the apostrophe grammar girl quick and dirty tips. According to unicode, the apostrophe is the same character.
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