Apostrophes

A lot of my language and grammar rants can be argued are useless, as some people simply have no interest in being correct, and society as a whole is wrong about certain things (see acronyms), so being right actually seems wrong in some cases. But apostrophes are important to everyone, and yet are used incorrectly in so many ways, I must immediately settle the apostrophe laws for everyone here.

Pluralizing Your Last Name (Or Anything)

Do you have a surname? The answer is almost definitely yes. Also likely is the fact you will, at some point in your life, pluralize your last name. Maybe you’re a family announcing what you’ll take to the upcoming youth-hockey team party. “The Smith’s will bring vats of soda,” you might say.

Three things wrong with this:

1. You should not be feeding children soda, and definitely not by the vat.
2. You are not bringing the vats, you are taking the vats (future rant).
3. There is no apostrophe in your last name.

Apostrophes do not pluralize anything. If your last name is Smith, your family is collectively known as the Smiths. If you have more than one car, you have cars. If you have more than one logo (inside joke—you know who you are), you have logos. You do not need an apostrophe to tell us there is more than one.

Decades

A lot of people know an apostrophe belongs somewhere when dealing with decades, but almost as many people put it in the wrong spot. If we’re going to talk about the horrible music of the ‘80s, we should write it just as I did there. The apostrophe is substituting for “19,” so we could also write it as “1980s.”

Notice the lack of an apostrophe between the zero and the s. It’s fairly common for people to get nervous when a number and a letter are connecting like that, but fear not—it’s fine. It only gets horrendous when you add the apostrophe.

Substitution

Finally, we reach an actual use of an apostrophe: substitution. Apostrophes can stand in for letters in certain instances. “Don’t” means the same as “do not.” The apostrophe takes the place of the o. This is the same rule that can be applied to decades, as mentioned above.

Possession

The vats of soda belong to the Smiths. Those vats of soda are the Smiths’. Sorry, everyone, but English just complicated things for us again. Yes, that apostrophe is after the s. In this case, the vats of soda belong to every Smith (the Smiths), and therefore we pluralize Smith before we add the apostrophe to show possession, hence attributing the vats as the Smiths’.

John Smith’s soda wasn’t enough, so he asked three other Smiths to get additional soda. Collectively, all the soda is the Smiths’. Or, all the soda belongs to the Smiths.

Use Apostrophes Wisely

I recommend not overusing apostrophes for the sake of absurdity as I did here, but it’s better to overuse them correctly than to put them where they don’t belong. Carry on.