The Final Touch

Love the mes­sage here — and in the spirit of the sea­son, I’ll for­give the miss­ing apos­tro­phes! But it’s just a good reminder that EVERYONE can use a proof­reader!! Merry Christ­mas from Final Touch Proof­read­ing & Editing!

photo © 2010 Allan Chatto | more info (via: Wylio)
Writ­ing to wish every­one a joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion of the turn from 2010 to 2011!

The occa­sion does present the oppor­tu­nity for a brief spelling/punctuation les­son, how­ever! This fes­tive night is not spelled “New Years Eve,” nor do we cel­e­brate “the New Years.” GAH!! I’ve heard and seen both of those too many times already! Here are our options:

• New Year’s Eve (the eve of the new year, thus the need for an apostrophe);
• Happy New Year! (we only cel­e­brate one at a time, so there is no “s” on the end);
• New Year’s, as in “We’re cel­e­brat­ing New Year’s at…” (I’ll give you this one, reluc­tantly, but only with the apos­tro­phe included to show that “Eve” is implied).

Just a tip to take with you into Jan­u­ary! For oth­ers like it, along with a wide range of pon­der­ings, I invite you to stop by this blog through­out 2011. I look for­ward to shar­ing new ven­tures with you!

–Heidi

‘I’m so con­fused!’ Photo by brain­loc on Stock​.Xchng​.com

For some rea­son, a lot of peo­ple are con­fused about when to use “it’s” (with the apos­tro­phe) and when to use “its” (with­out the apos­tro­phe). One of them is a con­trac­tion, the other a possessive.

If nuances of good writ­ing make you feel some­thing like the fel­low in the pic­ture above, you are not alone! But take heart! I’m about to lend a help­ing hand.

Some­one sug­gested to me that maybe the con­fu­sion comes about because it has been so ingrained in us that pos­ses­sives use apos­tro­phes, so we tend to assume “it’s” is the pos­ses­sive. Well, per­haps. But don’t for­get words like these, which are pos­ses­sives with­out apos­tro­phes: hers, his, yours, ours, mine, theirs. All these words are called pos­ses­sive pro­nouns. And guess what?! So is its! There is no apos­tro­phe in any of them! Look at the fol­low­ing examples:

“Did you take her books or ours?”

“Nei­ther. I took his books. You don’t have yours?”

“I only have one of mine. All I found of my math book was its jacket, so Jim and Lana let me bor­row theirs.”

“Its” is the pos­ses­sive pro­noun replac­ing “the book’s”: “the book’s jacket” = “its jacket.”

But notice the dif­fer­ence here:“It’s time to get to school.” In this sen­tence, “it’s” is called a con­trac­tion because it “con­tracts” or pulls together the two words “it” and “is.” The fol­low­ing con­trac­tions are also famil­iar to you — and note their apos­tro­phes: don’t, won’t, can’t, doesn’t, weren’t, aren’t, and more. Remem­ber­ing these con­trac­tions will, I hope, help you to remem­ber that “it is” also calls for an apos­tro­phe when con­tracted (or, as I like to say, smushed) into “it’s.”

One final point: NEVER EVER is it cor­rect to write its’. Never!!

Was this punc­tu­a­tion tip help­ful? I’d love to be your GPS (that is, gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion, and spelling) nav­i­ga­tor for other quan­daries you’d like assis­tance with. The first five peo­ple to post ques­tions which are cho­sen as the topic of future posts will each be awarded 15 min­utes of proof­read­ing as a free gift from me (that’s a $5 — $10 value or more, depend­ing on the pro­fes­sional and the type of work needed) as my thanks!

Do you have an ad, a let­ter, a blog post, a resume you’d like proof­read? I look for­ward to your ques­tions and sharing!

There are two mis­takes I see so com­monly in writ­ing — even in the writ­ing of very good writ­ers! — so I’d like to try to help sort them out. They have to do with mak­ing “peo­ple” and “each other” possessive.

The ten­dency is to write “peo­ples’ ” and “each oth­ers’.” For example:

1. Many peo­ples’ tal­ents are kept hid­den due to mod­esty. (wrong)

2. We glanced at each oth­ers’ out­fits and laughed to dis­cover we looked like twins. (wrong)

The think­ing (I think) in a writer’s mind is that we’re deal­ing with plu­rals so we need the typ­i­cal way of mak­ing a plural pos­ses­sive — which is, most often, adding an apos­tro­phe after an already-present “s.” The mis­take, how­ever, comes in treat­ing “peo­ple” and “each other” as sin­gu­lar, adding the “s” for the plural, and then adding the apos­tro­phe for the possessive.

Since “peo­ple” is already plural (just like “men,” “women,” and “chil­dren”), you need to add an “apostrophe-s,” NOT an “s-apostrophe.” The cor­rect form for sen­tence #1 is “people’s.” (Don’t be fooled by the other, though less com­mon, use of “peo­ples” as the plural form, indi­cat­ing sev­eral dis­tinct group­ings, nation­al­i­ties, or cul­tures of peo­ple, in which case the “s-apostrophe” (adding just an apos­tro­phe where the “s” is already present) would indeed be cor­rect: The Native Amer­i­can peo­ples’ cul­tures are so fascinating.

Now, as for mak­ing “each other” pos­ses­sive: The think­ing (I think) is that “each” is sin­gu­lar — and indeed it is. That’s why we say Each of the bats has a crack in it, NOT Each of the bats have a crack in it (nor, as is some­times seen, “in them”); since “each” is a sin­gu­lar sub­ject, the verb must match and be sin­gu­lar as well. But when “each other” is used, we are actu­ally talk­ing about two indi­vid­u­als, so it’s already a plural. No addi­tional “s” is needed to make it plural before adding the apos­tro­phe to make it pos­ses­sive. Instead, we add “apostrophe-s” as we would to any plural word not end­ing in “s” (like, again, “men,” “women,” “chil­dren,” which are made pos­ses­sive as “men’s,” “women’s,” “children’s” — never mind the fact that signs in most depart­ment stores leave off the apostrophes).

The cor­rected sen­tences then read as fol­lows:
3. Many people’s tal­ents are kept hid­den due to mod­esty. (right)

4. We glanced at each other’s out­fits and laughed to dis­cover we looked like twins. (right)

(I’m sure it only adds to the con­fu­sion when pro­grams like MS Word show “other’s” as a spelling error. Pay no atten­tion! — the soft­ware is wrong!! — doubt­less designed by peo­ple very tal­ented in mat­ters tech­ni­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal but not in mat­ters gram­mat­i­cal!)

I hope this expla­na­tion helps. Let me know if the usage is still not clear or if you have other spe­cific gram­mar ques­tions I can assist with.