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Hi, class! This is your instructor, Lee Ann Dickerson.
Because ideas belong to other people
we want indicate that ownership in our writing
and we use punctuation to help us do that.
In elementary school you learned about the apostrophe.
This video was to refresh your memory about how we use the apostrophe
correctly
and to give credit where credit is due.
Now when we're talking about
ideas, ideas belong to somebody. The ideas of Dickerson can be expressed that
way
with and "of" phrase, or they can also be expressed with an apostrophe showing
possession:
Dickerson's ideas.
We can do the same thing with statements. The statements of Dickerson,
whatever they were,
can also be expressed as "Dickerson's
statements."
And we do that with the apostrophe s. The apostrophe shows that ownership
I'll see students forget the apostrophe,
and I think it's because
we don't pronounce
the apostrophe. We don't pronounce
punctuation at all,
so there is no difference between a plural Dickersons
and the possessive
Dickerson's
when I pronounce them.
But there's a world of difference in how I use them in a sentence.
You learned about nouns in a particular order in elementary school and there's a
reason for that.
You learned about single nouns:
Dickerson,
we would say, lives in Kentucky.
And we know by that sentence there's only one Dickerson.
Now if I were talking about the whole family, I would make it
plural, which is the next
noun
form that you learned about an elementary school: the Dickersons
live in
kentucky shows that there's more than one Dickerson.
So nouns can be singular or they can be
plural. Where we run into trouble is where we start to make them possessive, to show
that ownership.
The Dickersons,
no, I want to do one first,
We're talking about me.
Dickerson's house is in
Kentucky. Seeing that on the page, I know there's only one Dickerson and
Dickerson owns that house in Kentucky.
The apostrophe s shows the ownership. When you see the apostrophe, think the
word "owns." Dickerson owns the house in Kentucky.
Think of the apostrophe like a suitcase if that helps you too, and the suitcase contains
whatever noun comes after the possessive noun.
Up here, Dickersons live: there's a verb.Down here, Dickersons own what comes
next: the house.
But if I'm talking about the house owned by
all the Dickersons,
the Dickersons' house
is in Kentucky.
I need to make the noun plural
by showing the s, but then I need to show possession,
and I'll do that by the apostrophe.
Now some people have learned that you make a
noun possessive by adding an apostrophe
or an s apostrophe.
I hate that; I wish it weren't taught that way. Don't think of it that way. You don't
ever add an s apostrophe.
You either add an apostrophe or an apostrophe s. Well what's the
difference?
Dickersons is made plural by adding the s.
It's made possessive
by adding the apostrophe.
If I added an apostrophe s, it would sound like this
The Dickersonsssss house is in Kentucky, and that's just a mouthful of things to say.
So when there's more than one syllable
in the plural
we'll add
an apostrophe alone.
Let's look at some other examples of how that works. In your research, you're gonna
probably come across some authors whose last names end in s:
Jones, for example.
I can say the ideas of Jones or I can say jones's ideas. Now when I pronounce
Jones's ideas,
I put an extra syllable on the end. They are the ideas belonging to
Jones.
Inside Jones's suitcase is a set of ideas.
Sometimes the names
are a little longer. Jenkins
has two syllables, and when I talk about Jenkins' ideas, I'll
do so with just an apostrophe:
Jenkins' ideas...
because we don't want to take two syllables and make them three. Jenkins'ssss ideas
or Simmons'ssss ideas.
The apostrophe in that case is enough
to show the possession; you don't need the extra s.
So show ownership in your paper,
ownership of ideas and statements, with the apostrophe.
Use it correctly.