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The only time apostrophes are used to make a plural is in the case of numbers, letters, and words used as words.
1. During the 1920's, the economy boomed.
3. She dotted all her i's and crossed all her t's.
3. The boy circled all the the's in his textbook.
Let's have no more unnecessary puppy deaths.
4. Malkin’s grammar needs a refresher.
Most people struggle with apostrophes: I see a lot of mistakes. Nowadays people have a lot of grammar ‘issues’. Too bad grammar isn’t taught nowadays. As I have already said in prior blogs, the curricula has been stripped bare.
Bev,
Considering the number of adults that can’t spell properly or use correct grammar - you would then have to admit that any ‘stripping’ was done long ago.
In fact, I am not at all surprised that given the lack of skills among adults, not one of you noticed my mistake above. Ms. Dare’s post is about plural apostrophes, and the example I gave was the singular possessive, not the plural. So, here is my revised entry:
4. The bloggers’ eyes at SQE need to have the beams removed.
Wayne’s example is that of a plural possessive, and no one is suggesting that possessives don’t have apostrophes. In fact, all possessives have apostrophes except for pronouns. Plurals, however, have apostrophes only in the three cases I gave.
As your blog was written, Wayne, you didn’t use the apostrophe incorrectly.
People do make a lot of mistakes using apostrophes for possessives. If learned though, they’re simple.
Ms. Dare,
You were equivocating. What you clearly said was, “The only time apostrophes are used to make a plural ....” You said nothing about possessive or otherwise.
Malkin, wasn’t Wayne using a singular possessive?
A plural possessive would be (for more than one leader) ‘leaders’ manuals’.
The possessive most often done wrong is eg: Douglas’ book. It should be Douglas’s book. Proper names that end in ‘s’ need the apostrophe plus an ‘s’, whereas plural nouns (eg: leaders) just takes the apostrophe.
The reason that apostrophes are often done wrong for proper names, as that for years, on this side of the pond, they were taught wrong. That’s why you’ll often see James’ book, when James’s book is correct.
Bev,
Read carefully, my mistake was logical (called a non-sequitor) not grammatical.
haha—not from what I understand a non-sequitor to be. Gee no wonder you had us all fooled (grin).
Bev,
This comes from Wikipedia:
“Non sequitur (Latin for “it does not follow”), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises.[1] In a non sequitur, the conclusion could be either true or false, but the argument is fallacious because there is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion.”
Since my example was singular and the argument was plural, it would be deemed a non sequitur. I did clearly note a logical error. You must be confusing the term non sequitur with its other definition as a literary device.
Oh, I’m wrong, Wayne—I missed the #4 you put in front of your statement. That changes everything.
No problem, Bev. It happens.
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