Apostrophe examples

An apostrophe (pronounced ah-pah-stroh-fee) is a small punctuation mark near the top of a line of writing ('). Apostrophes look like single quotation marks, but they’re used alone rather than in pairs.

Apostrophes mainly indicate that letters have been omitted, or they show a noun’s possession.

Occasionally, they can show that a single letter or number is plural.

Deciding when to use an apostrophe can seem trickier than determining when not to use an apostrophe, but it’s really not.

Some quick tips to remember before diving in are:

• Is the apostrophe replacing anything?

• Is the apostrophe showing the noun owning anything?
• Would the sentence be confusing without an apostrophe?

  Contraction apostrophe

• Contraction apostrophe
• Apostrophe figure of speech
• When to use 's or s'
• Apostrophe rules
• Apostrophe 's or s'
• Are you writing a holiday card and adding an -s or -es to your last name?
  • Don’t use an apostrophe (it's always wrong).

The main function of an apostrophe is showing possession.

Writers used to show possession by adding -es to the end of a noun, long before spelling conventions made -es a plural n

apostrophe in academic writing

apostrophe in creative writing