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Category Archives: apostrophes to show contractions

Let’s hear it for the mighty apostrophe!

Last week I was approached by a reporter from the Cambridge News who wanted my views on Cambridge City Council’s decision to drop apostrophes from new road signs. It was the first I’d heard of this, although I had read about this ruling for other counties. I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that Cambridge was [...]

The apostrophe: the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet

You will find that many school text books include explanations on how to use apostrophes within the punctuation section.  What many don’t realise is that this grapheme (written symbol, letter or group of letters) is actually a feature of spelling – not punctuation. Think about it: commas separate words, phrases and clauses; full-stops appear at [...]