# Apostrophe

The **apostrophe** (**_' or ’_**) character is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets.

In English it is used for several purposes:

-   The marking of the omission of one or more letters (as in the contraction) of _do not_ to _don't_.
-   The marking of possessive case of nouns (as in _the eagle's feathers_, or _in one month's time_).
-   The marking of plurals of individual characters (e.g. _p's and q's_).

The apostrophe looks the same as a [closing single quotation mark](/tags/quotation-mark) in many fonts, although they have different meanings, and Unicode recommends using the quotation mark character to represent most uses of the apostrophe.


# Apostrophe

The **apostrophe** ( ' ) is a punctuation mark with two main jobs in English: marking missing letters in **contractions** (*do not* → *don't*, *they are* → *they're*) and showing **possession** with nouns (*the eagle's feathers*, *one month's time*). It's not used for plurals — *cats* never takes an apostrophe, even though many writers slip and add one.

Mixing up *its* (possessive) and *it's* (contraction of *it is*), or writing *banana's £1* on a market sign, are the giveaway errors that mark a writer as careless. Getting the apostrophe right is one of the highest-leverage punctuation skills you can learn.


# Apostrophe

If you've ever stared at *its* and *it's* and not been sure which one belonged in your sentence, you've met the trickiest pair in English punctuation. Get this single mark right and your writing immediately looks more careful — get it wrong and even otherwise excellent prose looks sloppy.

The **apostrophe** ( ' ) does two main things in English: it marks missing letters in **contractions** (*don't*, *they're*, *we'll*) and shows **possession** with nouns (*the eagle's feathers*, *one month's time*). It does **not** make plurals: write *cats*, not *cat's*. The single most-mixed-up case is *its* (possessive) versus *it's* (= *it is*).


Apostrophe

See also