Grammar Police Triumph!

Bri · 4 Mar 2006 at 15:34

Rosa Prince Political Correspondent said:
YOU'LL FAIL GCSE FOR USING THE GROCER'S APOSTROPHE

EXAM chiefs will fail GCSE pupils if they commit "the grocer's apostrophe" punctuation howler, it was revealed yesterday.

Students won't get higher than a grade D in GCSE English if they put apostrophes in the wrong place.

The grocer's apostrophe got its name because of the common sight on the High Street of shops selling "apple's" and "banana's". Such plural nouns do not require an apostrophe. But it should be used in words where letters are missing - as in "don't" - or to indicate possession - as in "John's dog".

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is piloting the new "functional literacy" tests this year - to be up and running across the country by 2009.

Under the plans, no pupil would be able to get a grade C in GCSE English without being able to "punctuate accurately using commas, apostrophes and inverted commas".

Lynne Truss - author of the best-selling Eats, Shoots and Leaves - said she was delighted by the move.

LINK

Tremendous!

Bri · 4 Mar 2006 at 15:40

The apostrophe is only placed at the end of a word that ends with an S IIRC. e.g. Jesus' disciples.

Bri · 5 Mar 2006 at 10:34

Zefan said:
Wrong. I'm Rich. I have a PC. It's Rich's PC. If I was Chris and this was my PC it'd be Chris' PC correct, but I can also use it with my name

Eh? So when you say Rich's, how is the apostrophe at the end of the word? The previous poster said Johns', which is incorrect, just like Richs' would be.

Bri · 5 Mar 2006 at 11:28

Beansprout said:
When a word ends in s it is technically incorrect to omit the s after the ' in the posessive form however there are exceptions like Jesus where one can write Jesus'

Copied almost verbatim from what I remember from my dictionary so I hope that's right

Well you learn something new every day! So tehnically, Chris's is correct?