The Apostrophe

The Apostrophe, that is to say, this happy little fellow: ' is being sorely mistreated by today's writers. I notice apostrophe abuse even in the writings of otherwise perfect punctuators (yes, I love alliteration). So here is my message to the world (sit up straight and pay attention)
The Apostrophe has two uses:

1. To indicate where a letter is missing such as "don't". The o in "not" is missing and apostrophe lets you know this. This is called a Contraction.

2. To indicate ownership such as "Sally's bike" Sally owns the bike, it is the bike of Sally. But, because English speakers don't have time to say the words "bike of", we use apostrophe s.

These are the ONLY TIMES you use an apostrophe. There is something of a grey area though, when it comes to the word "it". Let me clear it up;

If you want to say "it is", you would shorten this to "it's" (the missing i gets an apostrophe to replace it)

If "it" owns something, you do NOT use an apostrophe. This is because "it" is an object and one object cannot own another object. So instead, you would say "its".

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To review what we've learnt:
Apostrophes are always used in contractions (don't, can't, won't, I've, we're, etc)
Apostrophes are usually used to show possession, but not with "it"

If your use of an apostrophe doesn't fall into either category it is wrong. One thing that really annoys me is when people write CD's or something to that effect.
"I bought 3 CD's yesterday" is wrong
"I bought 3 CDs yesterday" is right

"We're all 6's and 7's today" is wrong
"We're all 6s and 7s today" is right (alternately, you could write the number as a word; "sixes and sevens")


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One last point, if more than person owns something, the apostrophe goes after the s.
eg: "The bikes of the girls" becomes "The girls' bikes"
or
"The tree of the boys" becomes "The boys' tree"

But if the word is plural without an s (children, men, mice, etc)
You would say "The children's bikes"
"The mice's cheese"
and so on.


PS: Sorry if I've come across sounding really arrogant and snobby, it's just that this really gets to me and if I can reach just one person who will no longer be an apostrophe abuser, I'll die happy.