My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

Something to report?
Rule: Do not use quotation marks for indirect (or reported ) speech .
They say that you can’t have too much of a good thing.
He asked me how to use a comma .
W
HAT’S
ALL THE FUSS
? (
OR
, A
POSTROPHES
)
The apostrophe (’) is probably the most misunderstood piece of punctuation we
have.  At  its  simplest,  it  is  used  to  show  possession  (his  master’s  voice  )  or
omission (you wouldn’t dare ). But, of course, it isn’t as simple as that.
‘I’m sittin’ on the doorstep,
And I’m eating bread an’ jam,
And I aren’t a-cryin’ really,
Though I speks you think I am.’
M
ARION
S
T
J
OHN
W
EBB
, The Littlest One
Leave it out, will you?
Rule:  When  you  omit  a  letter  or  letters  in  a  word,  you  should  replace  it/them
with an apostrophe.
If you choose to write can’t instead of cannot, we’ve been here before rather than
we have been…, ’80s instead of 1980s , or ’er  indoors  instead  of  her  indoors  ,
you  need  to  replace  the  missing  letters  with  an  apostrophe.  Note  that  the
apostrophe in ’80s and ’er tells us that something is missing from the front of the
word,  but  it  is  still  an  apostrophe.  Do  not  write  ‘80s  or  ‘er  .  And  if  you  write
rock ’n’ roll rather than rock and roll, you need apostrophes before and after the
n . Don’t write ‘n’ . It isn’t a quotation.

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Swot’s Corner: The Ancient Greeks invented the rhetorical device apostrephein
(meaning ‘to turn away’). This had nothing to do with grammar. It described the
moment when a speaker turned away from the audience to address a usually
absent person or a thing personified – ‘O Liberty, what things are done in thy
name!’ This is still known as apostrophe today. However, over time, the word’s
meaning has widened to include ‘something missing’, such as letters and sounds.
Common contractions requiring an apostrophe include:
aren’t
hadn’t
they’re
can’t
hasn’t
they’ve
couldn’tisn’t
weren’t
daren’t it’s
*42
won’t
didn’t
shan’t
wouldn’t
don’t
shouldn’t
Such  contractions  aren’t  normally  used  in  formal  writing,  unless  someone’s
speaking,  but  in  a  friendly  book  such  as  this  one  they’re  OK.  But  remember  –
the apostrophe is replacing a missing letter, so please put it in the right place.