Those of us who respect and appreciate proper apostrophe usage awoke yesterday to some upsetting news: John Richards, one of the most ardent defenders of the correct use of the apostrophe, is giving ...

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, ...

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.” ...

When it comes to apostrophes, there are a lot of do’s and don’ts. The least-understood and most crucial of all is: Don’t use an apostrophe to form a plural. One luau plus another luau is not two ...

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 ...

LONDON — It was a modest proposal to ditch the humble apostrophe. Who’d’ve guessed it’d cause such a fuss? Not the officials in southwestern England whose idea it was to abolish the smudgy little ...

It's about time for our possessives to do a reverse Pluto. Pluto, you know, used to be a planet. Then it got demoted. This is like a word being turned into a prefix or suffix. Well, my ...