Punctuation!. December 24, 2010 10:11 by Huw Carrington

After a heated discussion with Mister Stinkyink himself about the proper use of apostrophes, he has not only given me permission to make posts on the blog, but has told me that this morning I have to. Perhaps he’s gone crazy with Christmas cheer, as I see no other reason he would ask me to rant on this subject. Moving on.

‘

Do you see that? That little thing above? That’s an apostrophe. They look like little floating commas, and if they were able to articulate for themselves, I think that they would tell us that they dislike being misused and abused.

You can use one in a contraction. This is where you shorten one or more words by taking out certain letters. We all do it regularly, with words like “doesn’t” instead of “does not” but there are many more examples.

You can use one for a possessive. That’s where you want to write that something belongs to someone or something else. “The hat’s feather,” or “Matt’s computer,” would be two simple examples.

You cannot use an apostrophe because it is aesthetically pleasing. This is not how punctuation works.

You cannot use “your” as a contraction; “Your an idiot,” is not right, nor is it big or clever. If you wrote that, do you know what it would mean? You’d be referring to someone else’s “An idiot.” And (at the risk of starting a sentence with a conjunction) that would be wrong.

You cannot use an apostrophe for a plural. “Cartridge’s,” means “Cartridge is,” which I suspect is not what most people would be trying to accomplish. Likewise (and this one bugs me) if you’re talking about a decade then “80’s” is wrong; in a perfect world everyone would write it out as “Eighties,” however I’ll accept “80s,” because I’m so tolerant.

Finally, the word “like” is not punctuation, and neither is the abbreviation “lol.”

And finally finally, my favorite possible use of an apostrophe? "I'm an idiot". Correct use of punctuation AND true!.