Apostrophes are the curly floating commas in sentences that usually indicate possession or a contraction. There are a few set phrases and holidays, however, that also use apostrophes. In fact, ...

Apostrophes are strange little creatures that can cause two words to merge. Uh huh! The apostrophe takes the place of the removed letters. This is how it contracts the two words together. It can't be ...

The apostrophe can be used to show who things belong to. If an item belongs to something, the apostrophe shows us who, by sitting at the end of the noun. If that noun doesn't end in s, the apostrophe ...

Last year, grammatical tragedy struck in the heart of England when Birmingham City Council decreed that apostrophes were to be forever banished from public addresses. To the horror of purists and ...

In French, to show that someone possesses something, you use their word for “of,” which is “de”: La plume de ma tante. Spanish works the same way: La venganza de Moctezuma. Italian, too: Buca di Beppo ...

Mark Twain’s encounter with a particular foreign tongue inspired an essay called “The Awful German Language.” Welcome to a new feature of this column. We won’t call it “The Awful English Language.” ...