A Passion for Apostrophes

I don’t care about art, classical musical, science, or hot beverages. (And let me just take a moment to apologize to Kristi and Kjell for that. They’re now denying any relationship to me.) What I do care about, among a few other things, is punctuation. A meandering sentence, properly punctuated, thrills my soul. The semicolon is a particular favorite of mine, so much like a comma, yet so individual and distinct. Semicolons are sadly underutilized. When I do see them, they’re often used incorrectly, usually confused with a colon. Don’t let the similar names confuse you; the two are worlds apart.

A stand-out day in my early training as an editor was learning the difference between the hyphen (-), the en-dash (–), and, my personal favorite, the em-dash (—). Isn’t it pretty? And oh, how functional it is! It makes generous appearances in my writing—and if you’re not using it, you’re missing out!

Commas, quotation marks (doubles and singles, and always curly!), parentheses, and even the trusty old period are all my dear friends. I handle them carefully, treating them with respect and never asking them to do something they weren’t intended for. I’m particularly protective of the apostrophe, which is the most vulnerable to abuse. I care deeply about the apostrophe and how it’s used. While the other eighth-graders in Mrs. McRae’s English class were writing notes—with heinous punctuation, no doubt—I was inhaling her discussion of the apostrophe, hanging on her every word, heart racing for the time I could use it myself in the assigned exercises. Although I of course had used the apostrophe before, never had I felt such power to move it around and thus alter the meaning of entire sentences! I learned that “it’s” is always “it is” and still wonder where everyone else was on the day this was taught. I learned about contractions and possessives and that apostrophes are way too special to be used for a simple pluralization.

My children—texting, abbreviating, acronym-users that they’re sure to be—will be taught the finer things about punctuation and will be held to a high standard by their mother, if no one else. They’ll probably know nothing of art or music, but you can bet they’ll be connoisseurs of the apostrophe and loving its (NOT IT’S) place in the world.