Help with Apostrophes

by Craig Shrives

Getting Help with Apostrophes

The apostrophe is a real grammar villain. It is responsible for lots of serious writing errors. In fact, of all the punctuation marks, the apostrophe is the one with most potential to damage your credibility because your readers will expect you to know how to use apostrophes.

Some learning points related to apostrophes are simple, but many are not. This page has a video, a game, and our full list of apostrophe-related lessons to help you master apostrophes.

Our lessons cover everything from simple concepts such as apostrophes in contractions (e.g., isn't) to more complex issues such as showing joint possession (Jack and Jill's houses vs Jack's and Jill's houses).

Table of Contents

  • Our Main Lesson on Using Apostrophes
  • Apostrophe Placement Game
  • Specific Help with Using Apostrophes
  • Apostrophe Exercises
  • Video Lesson

Our Main Lesson on Using Apostrophes

All the rules for using apostrophes are covered in this lesson:

Apostrophe Placement Game

If you're sure you know how to use apostrophes, you can test yourself with this Tetris-style game, which tests the following:
  • Each falling question has a correct apostrophe and a wrong one.
  • Click on the correct one to score points and to make the question disappear.
  • If you click on the wrong one (or do not click), the question will fall to the bottom.
  • The wrongly answered or unanswered questions will start to build up.
  • When the screen is full, you're toast.
  • (The harder the level, the more points you score per correct answer.)
  • Good luck!
Tip: If the game is playing slowly, you can use the controls below to remove the background text and image to speed up the game.
Background Image:

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off

rules for using apostrophes

Specific Help with Using Apostrophes

If you need help with a specific topic related to apostrophes, you will find a lesson among these more-focused topics:

Apostrophe Exercises

Here are the exercises related to using apostrophes:

Video Lesson

Here is a video summarizing the use of apostrophes:

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See Also

Using apostrophes Apostrophes for possession Apostrophe placement rules Apostrophe after s Apostrophe after z Apostrophe before s Apostrophes for awkward plurals Apostrophes after acronyms and abbreviations Apostrophes in contractions Apostrophes in expressions like 2 years' pay and a day's notice Apostrophes used incorrectly for plurals Apostrophe exercises Apostrophes in names Apostrophe misuse Apostrophes in contractions Using brackets parentheses Using colons Using commas Using dashes Using hyphens Using quotation marks Using semicolons "Apostrophes for possession" game (Tetris-style game) "Apostrophes in time expressions" game (Tetris-style game)