Apostrophe 1

Apostrophes in possessive pronouns

What’s the difference between “its” and “it’s”, between “your” and “you’re”? Is there such a word as “her’s”?

The apostrophe is responsible for more errors — and more anguish — than all the other punctuation marks put together. No wonder that, as Pam Peters has pointed out, its days are probably numbered; if (comparatively) few people know the difference, what useful purpose does it serve?

Well, like everything in language, the apostrophe appeared because it met a need, and I find it hard to imagine that the need has gone away. Let’s look at the need, and see why the apostrophe exists: let’s see what it does.

The problem with the apostrophe is that it appears to do two jobs, and those jobs appear to overlap. I say “appears” in both cases because, with the right kind of lateral thinking, the two jobs can be made to appear one.

The two jobs are “to show possession” and “to show that something is missing”. When we write “my uncle’s hat”, we mean “the hat that my uncle possesses”. When we write “I can’t be bothered”, we mean that “I cannot be bothered putting in the space-n-o or pronouncing the extra syllable”. When we write “It’s raining”, the apostrophe indicates a missing space-i; when we write “its tail” (referring, no doubt, to the family pet’s caudal appendage), why don’t we need an apostrophe to show that we mean “the tail possessed by it”?

Here’s the lateral thinking. Without wanting to suggest that the following is in any sense historically accurate, we can see that the possessive apostrophe could have developed as a special case of missing letters.

Back in the days of Chaucer, and taking liberties with a few features of Middle English Grammar, it was common to refer to “my uncle his hat”. Gender lacking, in those days, the political sensitivity of our time, we could even have referred to “my aunt his pen”. So the “possessive” apostrophe is merely signalling the omission of space-h-i. Similarly, we could have referred to “the cat its tail”. In this use of “its”, there’s no more need for an apostrophe than in the corresponding use of “his”. (Do you ever feel tempted to write “hi’s” instead of “his”? I expect not.)

Similarly, the difference between “your” and “you’re” is the difference between “possessed by you” and a shortened “you are”. As for “her’s” (or “your’s”, come to that), it’s just not on.

Of course, there are many more questions about the apostrophe, and I’ll try to deal with some of those in a later column. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll be a little more confident about the fundamentals.