Episode: 2596
Title: HPR2596: Battling with English - part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2596/hpr2596.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:21:11

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This is HPR Episode 2596 entitled Battling with English Part 2.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 21 minutes long and can in an explicit flag.
The summary is misunderstanding about English grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthaus.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at Ananasthaus.com.
Hello everybody, Dave Morris here for Hacker Public Radio.
Today I've got a show in the series Battling with English and this is Part 2.
I wanted to start by just commenting on the last episode where I talked about various
confusions between words and things.
I had a comment about the etymology of words and asking really if I would comment on the etymology
when it seemed appropriate so I thought I'd just mention that in the context of the words
then THEN and THEN. There's a confusion between these people use them wrongly in the wrong
context interchangeably. I mentioned that there was a reference to their etymology but I didn't
go into detail. So reading the online etymology diction on the page about the word THEN, THEN,
I found the sentence that it was developed from the adverb THEN and not distinguished from it
by spelling until 1700s. So it seemed that the two words are related and historically were the same.
They've separated out over time and I think the mistakes that have been made
differentiating between them have nothing to do with their origins. They're just mistakes because
they do look quite similar. That out of the way, today's topic is about apostrophes. Now you're
probably aware, hopefully you're aware that an apostrophe is a punctuation mark. It has three main
uses. First of all it's used to indicate that letters have been omitted so you find words that
are contracted. So for example the phrase they are can be contracted into there. So there,
they're coming to dinner is the contraction of they are coming to dinner. Second usage is
turning a word into a possessive form. So you would say something like the cat's paw. The paw
is the cat's in that context refers to the paw which possesses the cat possesses the paw.
Cat's paw means it's the paw owned by the cat. And the third usage is when the plural of a single
letter or digit is required such as the expression dot your eyes and cross your T's. Eyes and
T's in that sentence are written as I apostrophe S and T apostrophe S. Now there are other uses
and it gets a bit complex actually but we're not going to we're going to try and steer away from
the complexity today. There's a Wikipedia article I've referenced which has got a lot of detail in
it. It's a bit dry so I'm not digging too deeply into it myself but you might find it useful to
look at if you're interested in going further. And I'm thinking that since this is a complex topic
I might well visit it again later in the series. See how we go if if if I get indications from
listeners that they want me to do this and I'd certainly do it. So you'll find the term contraction
in relation to apostrophes. I've already used it and it's that's a term that's used to describe
the written form of a shortened word. So words originally start by people speaking them and then
speaking them in a shortened way. And in linguistics the term used for this process of shortening
elision and deletion which basically means the emission of one or more sounds and it's usually
done to make words easier to pronounce. You will be aware that trying to pronounce words as they're
written can sometimes be a bit tongue twisting and they tend to evolve into contracted forms.
The reason I mentioned elision and deletion is because you might come across them in your in
your journey through this subject and I was trying to describe them a little bit. So common
examples are the word cannot which is sometimes written as one word sometimes is two and you can
track that to can't see a n apostrophe t. I am becomes I'm you are becomes your or you're which is
I like to pronounce the difference actually between that and the the the thing that prefers to
possession but not everybody does. Is not comes isn't let us becomes let's that's let us two words
comes less not the the salad vegetable it is becomes it's so the apostrophe in can't see a
n apostrophe t shows that it's a contraction and not a word on its own. If you've been written
without the apostrophe then that's an entirely different word and in fact can't is a word and it
means hypocritical and sanctimonious talk. So you've got to be careful while you end up writing
the wrong word if you just emit apostrophes. You can make similar arguments for other cases of
contractions but not all of course. So I hope that particular bit is pretty clear. Let's talk
about apostrophes in possessives which is an is an area of great misunderstanding I find. If you
look at the linguistic arguments in the Wikipedia article that I've cited many times you'll see
that there's more than just the possessive usage but we'll we'll just restrict ourselves to
the possessive form at the moment and perhaps look at more detail at another time. So I thought
it's worth first of all standing up by looking at plurals because plurals and possessives
are confused quite a lot and plurals are often but not always formed by adding an s or an
yes to the end of a word and when you do that you do not put an apostrophe in. So if you take the
singular word cat make it plural cats you put an s on the end. Crocodile becomes crocodile
an s has been put on the end programmer becomes programmers an s is on the end sandwich lunchtime
so I thought of that one becomes sandwiches so there's an yes on the end volcano becomes volcanoes
with an yes on the end. There are of course other plurals in English the plural of child is not
child's but children. The plural of amoeba is not strictly amoeba's but amoeba, a-b-a-e at the end
because the word has a Latin origin though there's an aside amoeba's is gaining acceptance though
if I'd written that in a in a reply to an exam question that when I was learning biology
I don't think it would have been accepted that's because it was a fair time ago I guess. Let's look
at the possessive forms of words which the ones that are often confused with the plurals.
There's a difference between cats c-a-t-s and cats c-a-t apostrophe s you could write
I have two cats so that would be c-a-t-s because you have two feline friends that put it in the notes
but you would not write I have two cats where you spell it c-a-t apostrophe s analyzing it
that's an incomplete sentence you're saying that you have two things belonging to cats
possessed by them because you use the possessive form but you haven't said what the things are so
the sentence makes no sense the word cats here with an apostrophe is not the plural of cat you could
write this is my cat's basket where you write c-a-t apostrophe s means the basket belonging to your cat
so I put a few examples here and there's tons of them of course and I use some of the words that
I used in the plurals example so the the base word cat the singular possessive cat c-a-t apostrophe
s you might write this cat's fur is black crocodile possessive becomes crocodile with an apostrophe s
a crocodile's teeth can regenerate many times programmer becomes programmers to be to make the
possessive with a apostrophe s on the end you might write a programmer's life is a hard one so
the apostrophe s relates to life which is possessed by the programmer sandwich you would write to
get the possessive singular possessive sandwich apostrophe s that means something belonging to your
sandwich you might write this is my sandwich is filling slightly on sentence but there you go
you actually just to digress on that one for a second it's rare to write sentences like that
native English speakers tend not to do that you wouldn't say that you would say looking at a
jar of peanut butter or something you might say this is the filling for my sandwich you wouldn't say
this is my sandwich is filling mostly you would not it's perfectly okay but it's just a rather
awkward sentence i think it's quite a lot of reference to this type of writing and uh sure you
could find out more about this is if this is something that is of interest to you and i'm aware
that there's a a number of people on who listen to hbr who are not English speakers natively so
these are these are issues that can cause a bit of a bit of a problem so that's all pretty
simpler think you'll agree but what about when you're writing possessives relating to plurals
what if you want to express the idea of possession by many things to write about a toy owned by
several cats you'd write something like the cat catnip mouse makes a sound when moved but this time
cat is c-a-t-s apostrophe so it's plural cats with a possessive apostrophe you might also write
the boy's bedroom are down this way in this case the boys is talking about a number of boys and
the bedrooms are plural and you would write b-o-y-s apostrophe if the plural is not formed by just adding
an s then it gets a little more complex so you might refer to the word man where the plural is men
and then you would write the sentence follow the signs to the men's changing room not the man's
apostrophe but the men's m-e-n apostrophe s that's because men doesn't end with an s whereas boys
does so this is something where it causes a lot of confusion and i think there's a really good
explanation on the site called grammar monster and there's a reference that the page about
using apostrophe there's a a diagrammatic box item on the on the page i've mentioned
which talks about why it's like this what is the apostrophe replacing the apostrophe you put on the
end of boys or cats what's it replacing well it's historical historically English added
e-s to a noun to show possession so you might have written back then about the toy of a single dog
and you would have written dog-es toys d-o-g-e-s toys you will see this if you look at really old
writings the toys of a single dog plural again the toys of a single dog would have been a dog-es
toys d-o-g-e-s t-o-y-s a toy of multiple dogs would have been the dog says toy so in that case dogs
gets e-s on the end remember this is ancient an ancient way of doing it this is not me telling you
the right way to do it i've written this out in the notes because i thought it would be helpful but
you might be best to go and look at the grammar monster page where it's done in a a diagrammatic
form and with cartoon dogs and stuff the next one is the mother of multiple children would have
been the children-es mother i don't know how these were pronounced children-es maybe and maybe
that was the right way so that would be children-es mother and the emblem of the country whales would
have been whales as emblems be sometimes do say that still so over time the e in the e-s i'm
mentioning before was replaced by an apostrophe and if that left the sequence s apostrophe s
the end of a word the last s was removed so the toy of a single dog became a dogs toy
d-o-g apostrophe s so the e has been dropped there the toys of a single dog became a dogs toys
d-o-g apostrophe s again the toy of multiple dogs became the dogs apostrophe toy so the
e-s has been taken off the end not the e-s been taken off the the e has been taken from the
the end leaving s apostrophe s and then the s has been dropped the final s has been dropped
okay got that the mother of multiple children became the children's mother so that was an apostrophe
s the emblem of the country worlds became whales emblem so it was whales-es and then again the
e-s was converted to apostrophe s but that made the word end in s apostrophe s so the last s was
dropped now i find this explanation really i mean this is really true but it's a useful explanation i
find and i sort of got the gist of this at some point in my lifetime of learning this this stuff
but i could not have put it in such a nice way as this particular article does so i strongly
recommend it so let's look at apostrophes with single letters and digits we already mentioned one
in case and that's when you use a plural form of single letter or digit it's a bit confusing
but it does actually make sense when you when you think about it and i've referred here to another
site gramma girl we're strongly recommend she has podcast and those are really cool what she says
i'm just quoting her directly here the apostrophe is especially important when you're writing about a's
eyes and use that's a apostrophe s i apostrophe s and you apostrophe s because without the apostrophe
readers could easily think you're writing the words as is and us so how would you differentiate
between a series of a's and a series of eyes and a series of you without that apostrophe you might
use emphasis or something like that but the apostrophe seems to be a generally better way of doing
and that's why it's how it's evolved now here's a thing which catches people out all the time you
might expect that the word it it when made possessive would become it's it apostrophe s but that's
wrong in fact the word it apostrophe s it's is an abbreviation for it is so you only use the apostrophe
to represent a missing letter so you might write it's very warm in Scotland at the moment actually
today it's not but when i wrote this it was a very very hot it's is it apostrophe s and it means
it is very warm you might also write it's been interesting researching this topic it apostrophe s
that's short for it has it has been interesting researching this topic there's another sentence
the horse stamped its feet shook its head and made in this case these are possessive its feet
so there's no apostrophe otherwise it would be it is feet and it is head which makes no sense
but if you ever end out about whether to use an apostrophe with its consider that with the apostrophe
it means it is or it has check to see whether that makes sense in your sentence before you decide whether
to use it or not so you have to ask why well i have to ask why because i want to give you an answer
the its stroke its apostrophe s issue has evolved to be that way i guess and it's likely that this
has happened to make the the its i t s with no apostrophe conform to some of the other possessives
like yours his hers ours theirs and who's so you do not use yours and when you write yours you don't
put an apostrophe and nor his nor hers nor ours nor theirs just remember that it apostrophe s always
means it is or it has so i've chucked in a few examples of things that although i've done a
fan number of examples already i thought i'd throw in a few examples of what you should never write
thanks to watch out for and things to avoid one of the things you'll often see is and obviously
in front in shops and stuff something like apples with an apostrophe apple apostrophe s some
some price two dollars two pounds a kilo i've put here i have no idea if that's true or not
that is generally referred to as the green grosses apostrophe or green grosses apostrophes
it's the case of these things in that case it's written with green grosser apostrophe s
meaning a single green grosser or green grosser s apostrophe which means all green grosses tend to do it
this make mistake is astonishingly common you'll see all over the place but the thing is that
many writers seem to assume that all words that end in s should have an apostrophe
so don't add an apostrophe to word just because it ends with an s so you wouldn't write
these bananas are overripe by writing bananas with an apostrophe s there you're talking about the
plural form of bananas not the possessive one bananas don't possess anything or at least in your
sentence they don't there's a brilliant example from grammar monster again that i've referred to
again i've borrowed that one example cited it i think you'd say and the example is i like pigs
dogs look up to us cats look down on us pigs treat us as equals but the inner trouble is
every word that every plural in the example it's been written incorrectly because it's got a
it's been turned into a possessive with an apostrophe so pigs is pig apostrophe s dogs is dog
apostrophe s cats is cat apostrophe s and so on and even equals is equal apostrophe s so don't do
that think about it i see this all the time i've read about three websites today and other things
which which do this it's as if people think oh i'm putting an s on the end of this word it
must need an apostrophe but it only needs an apostrophe if it refers to a possessive so that's
pretty much the end except that i wanted to say as i've already alluded to i'm probably going to do
another episode on this possibly more than one i don't know so i tried to make this as straightforward
as i can covering the sort of basics of it there are other factors that define where and when to use
apostrophes and there are style guides that that define the recommended way of doing it and there
is some odd edge condition as well that we might want to look at so i might look at this in more
detail at a later episode that if you look at that Wikipedia reference i've mentioned several times
then it does dig very deeply into it so if you're up for it have a look at that and particularly if
you feel that it would be useful to cover this subject in a bit more depth then do let me know
through the comments or email and that will motivate me to try and turn what is a complicated subject
into something that's a bit more digestible at least that's the intention all right so i hope
you found that useful and not too long and that's it for now bye now
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