Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
September/October 2003

Ask Elaine: Reining in Apostrophilia

by Elaine Parrish
DMV Copyeditor

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The apostrophe is a valuable device, but careful writers must guard against becoming so enamored of this little punctuation mark that they bestrew their writing with apostrophes in places they don’t belong.

For example, in standard American English, apostrophes are almost never used in simple plural nouns. Consider this sentence advising supervisors how to inform their employees of newly instituted procedures: “All manager’s should print out and share the new policy’s with their subordinate’s.” All three nouns in this sentence (managers, policies, and subordinates) are simple plurals and take no apostrophe. Exception to this rule: An apostrophe can be used in a plural noun when confusion with another word would otherwise result: “There are two a’s [not as] and two i’s [not is] in the made-up word apostrophilia.”

Nowhere is rampant apostrophilia more evident than with the pronoun its. Even some otherwise excellent writers regularly use it’s when they mean its. This mistaken usage isn’t really surprising, since most regular possessives are formed by adding apostrophe + s to the noun (for example, Becky’s column, the president’s message). So why don’t we use it’s as the possessive of it?

The pattern for forming possessives of most regular nouns is indeed noun + apostrophe + s. But that’s not the case for possessive pronouns, and it is almost always a pronoun. As a pronoun, it follows the same pattern as other possessive pronouns—his, hers, mine, yours, ours, and theirs—none of which uses apostrophe + s. Thus, you would write, “The monster combed its [not it’s] hair.” The only possible exception: If you’re referring to a being whose name is actually “It”—hardly a situation you’ll encounter frequently unless you’re a member of the Addams Family!—you can correctly write, “My cousin It’s hair is the longest and greenest I’ve ever seen!” In that sentence, It is serving as a proper noun, not a pronoun.

In contrast, the word it’s (with the apostrophe) is always reserved for use as a contraction of it is or it has.

If you can’t decide between it’s and its, here’s a quick and easy way to determine which to use: if you can substitute it is or it has, then use it’s. If you cannot, then use its. Example: “It’s [contraction of It has] been two months, so I think it’s [contraction of it is] time to give the porcupine its [possessive of it] bath.”

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