RE: FN-FORUM: any punctuation experts out there?

date posted 10th September 2007 14:58

Matt wrote:
> You only add the ' at the end when the word ends with an s and
> needs ownership, e.g. James' book or Mr. Roberts' shirt.

Adding to this, note that in this (correct) case:

"Blackmore Vale Branch opens its doors for the first time"

the 'its' has an 's' because of its possessive content, but 'its' is a
special case - an apostrophe is never used for "possessive pronouns" (i.e.,
his, her, its, my, yours, ours).

If on the other hand the sentence was "The dog's bone", a possessive
apostrophe is used.

Lynne Truss's "Eats, shoots and leaves" book
(http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/) is a concise, amusing overview of common
grammatical mistakes, from the perspective of a grammatical militant that
confesses to correcting mistakes in incorrectly spelt posters!

Cheers, Ben

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