Turn back all ye of faint heart, for beyond this lies madness, turmoil and confusion...
Editing, grammar, punctuation - the list of things you need to know about writing is endless and complicated. Don’t type ‘writing help’ in Google, all you get are ads for apps and subscriptions – things to spend your money on.
When writing, you have to know where to put apostrophes and where NOT to put apostrophe’s… (Hint: not there).
When to use Capital Letters and when not to use them. (Hint: there are two too many in that last sentence).
Which witch is which? And more to the point, is there a wich? (Yes…)
Homophones are NOT similar to homophobes – trust me on that.
Don’t even get me started on there, their, they’re.
Back to apostrophes – and a story from my childhood.
I enjoyed English lessons at the beginning of my ‘big school’ career. I remember my teacher, Mr Buxton. He wore tweed suits and he was a large, friendly gentleman. He had a bald head (not bold, that’s a different thing altogether) and he spoke to his class, not at us and though I didn’t know it then, there’s an important and significant difference.
This isn't Mr Buxton, but it's close!
The fact that I remember his name shows how well he taught. I liked him and therefore, the name sticking with me after all this time shows what an impact he had, as I can usually remember the teachers that resonated for more negative reasons, unfortunately.
One particular lesson for us 11-year-olds was collective nouns (I think).
He had written a long list on the blackboard and our mission should we choose to accept it (I’m joking, there was no accept/decline lessons back then) was to copy the list into our work book.
We had to use a real pen on real paper, in an actual book back then, too!
The list looked something like this:
An army of
A flock of
A flock of
A herd of
A hive of
A murder of
A pack of
A school of
A swarm of
A team of
A pride of
I LOVED this kind of thing. It reminded me of lessons with Mr. Roberts, our Head Teacher back in ‘little school’ a lifetime ago, but only six weeks ago in reality.
I quickly wrote down my answers, all neat and on separate lines.
An army of ant’s
A flock of bird’s
A flock of sheep
A herd of deer
A hive of bee’s
A murder of crow’s
A pack of hound’s
A school of fish
A swarm of wasp’s
A team of horse’s
A pride of lion’s
I was the first to finish and I went to the front of the class, proud as a peacock. Mr. Buxton smiled at me and my heart sank. I knew I’d messed up.
He explained my error and told me to make it right.
That meant either re-writing the whole thing, or crossing out all the erroneous apostrophes. He told me to cross them out.
The first page in my first ‘big school’ English book and it was filled with crossed out apostrophes!
GUTTED!
But, I’ve never forgotten that lesson.
Thinking back on this event, it could possibly be where my self-imposed terror of putting myself into the physical spotlight stems from. I could imagine all the rest of the class (strangers to me at that point because not only was it a new school, it was a new area for me) laughing at me rather than with me. I guess I’m a perfectionist and I knew I’d let myself down. First impressions last, and all that.
An apostrophe denotes two things:
The first - A missing letter, as in:
Don’t – do not
Can’t – cannot or can not
Won’t – will not (ha, that’s different, isn’t it?)
O’clock – of the clock (really!)
There’ll – there will
It’ll – it will
They’ve – they have
I’ll and I’ve – I will and I have
Shouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t, wouldn’t – all missing an ‘o’ but using an apostrophe in place of it.
If you shorten a couple of words, or even one word (for example, cannot) then you need to put something in place of the missing letter(s) and pull it all together into one word - that’s an apostrophe for a contraction.
The second - To show something belongs to someone or something:
Sheila’s bike – the bike belonging to Sheila
Ross’s car – the car belonging to Ross
And you can write that another way:
Ross’ car – the car still belongs to Ross but with fewer (not less) letters.
The dog’s bone – the bone belonging to the dog
The dogs’ bones – more than one dog and more than one bone but only one apostrophe
Bloody hell, NO!
Men at Arms – no apostrophe unless you’re saying the men’s arms and that’s a different matter.
Plurals do not need an apostrophe. If you’ve got a raft of otters or a shrewdness of apes, there’s no apostrophe needed, or wanted. It’s wrong.
A wake of vultures
A muster of storks
A murder of crows (two crows is an attempted murder, yes?)
A parliament of owls
A skulk of foxes (they get a bad rap)
And of course,
A memory of elephants
Have you also noticed, the names of the animals don’t have capital letters? That’s because they’re not ‘Proper Nouns’ like London, Paris, Edinburgh, which are proper nouns and are also capitals…
I almost forgot,
From
wich
in British English
(wɪtʃ)
NOUN dialect
- a saltworks
- a salt-producing town
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