Writing Tips: Apostrophes

Question: Which of the following sentences is correct?

A) Julie would need to brush Molly's teeth as well as the dog's.

B) Julie would need to brush Molly's teeth as well as the dogs'.

 C) Julie would need to brush Molly's teeth as well as the dogs.

Photo: kingwestvets.com

Answer: All of the above. Which one to use depends on what you're trying to say.

In A), there is one dog, and Julie needs to brush his teeth.

In B), there are at least two dogs, and Julie needs to brush the teeth of both (or all) of them.

In C), there are at least two dogs, and Julie can put the toothbrush away, because it's not their teeth she needs to brush, but the dogs themselves.

The key:

1. The apostrophe (') and 's' together show possession. Together they indicate that something belongs to someone. (The apostrophe also has one other function in English, and we'll get to that.) 
2. If the apostrophe comes before the 's' then there is only one owner (or at least, only one owner mentioned). This is called a singular possessive. Some examples: Mary's dollhouse, the resident's home, the dog's teeth.
3. If the apostrophe comes after the 's' then more than one owner is being mentioned. This is called a plural possessive. Examples: the girls' dollhouse, the residents' home, the dogs' teeth.
4. Sometimes the thing that's owned has already been mentioned and it's not necessary to state it again. For example, you wouldn't say, "When you've filled the horse's water bucket, go ahead and fill the donkey's water bucket and the llama's water bucket." You'd say, "When you've filled the horse's water bucket, go ahead and fill the donkey's and the llama's." In our original examples, both A) and B) contain the understood word 'teeth.'
5. If there's no apostrophe, then there's no possessive. In C), Julie simply would need to brush Molly's teeth, and also brush the dogs. The dog's teeth are not the object here: the dogs are.

(There are two exceptions to these rules, and we'll talk about them in a little bit.)

The grocer's apostrophe:

What about sentences like these?

• This weekend only, potatoe's are only $1.00 a pound.
• Check out our new shipment of  fruit's and vegetable's.

Sorry, but they're incorrect. These are simple plurals, not possessives (more than one potato, more than one fruit, more than one vegetable, and they don't own anything) so the apostrophes shouldn't be there. This error is so common in grocery stores that it has come to be known as the grocer's apostrophe (or the grocers' apostrophe - nobody seems to know how many grocers there are).

Exceptions:

The exception to rule #1 above is for irregular plurals such as children, men and women. In these cases, the apostrophe will come before the 's' but the word will still be plural: 

• Child's: belonging to one child. Children's: belonging to more than one child.
• Man's: belonging to one man. Men's: belonging to more than one man.
• Woman's: belonging to one woman. Women's: belonging to more than one woman.

The exception to rule #5 is the word its. To prevent confusion with the contraction it's (short for it is), the possessive its (belonging to it) is spelled without the apostrophe.

Other uses for apostrophes: 

The only other official use of the apostrophe in English is to show where something was left out. Usually you'll find them in contractions (didn't, hadn't, that's, he'd, etc.), but sometimes they're used in dialogue to help show how someone speaks (he's bigger'n me, peaches 'n' cream).  

Unofficially, the apostrophe is often used to indicate a glottal stop, especially in casual transliterations of foreign words. The glottal stop sounds a lot like a hiccup, and can be found in the middle of 'uh-oh'. 

If you want to know more about that, I have some Sco'ish friends who are experts a' the glo'al sto'p.

Photo: your-kilt.com

Quantity and Quality: On Writing Quotas

When I asked novelist Michael Lane if he had learned any lessons he wanted to pass on to other writers, he said, "Set a daily word-count and meet it, even if you’re writing absolute garbage that day. If you do that, you’ll finish, and once it’s done there’s no passage so bad you can’t go back and fix it." From what I've seen, Michael's in good company: word count is a pretty common measurement for writers to use in setting quotas for themselves.

Photo: bookdirtblog.blogspot.com

When I was doing the first draft of my current book, a word count quota worked perfectly. The only important thing was to get the ideas down. Clarity, completeness, voice and all that were optional at that point, and getting the details right was not even a consideration.

When I started doing the second draft, I didn't give myself any quotas at all beyond knowing I needed to get it done before NaNoWriMo '13. I waited until I felt recharged after NaNoWriMo '12 and started in with enthusiasm about a week into December. But without a standard to measure my progress by, I alternately floundered and obsessed. By the middle of January it was more than clear that I needed to set some sort of quota.

But word count wasn't going to do it, for two main reasons:

• Overall, the second draft expands on the first, but passages of the first draft are ridiculously wordy, redundant or just need to be removed, so some days the word count goes down instead of up.
• This is a Star Trek novel. That means I have a huge body of already-established particulars to follow, from timelines and events to technology, cultural thinking and of course, the Cardassian language itself. And thanks to a not-entirely-unearned genre stereotype, I'm zealous about protecting my reputation by not letting the novel degrade into an inaccurate hack-job. Sometimes a single sentence can represent several hours of research.

Thanks to Paramount

After a few weeks of mulling it over and some help from my brother, I decided to try these simple requirements:

1. Write something each day, six days a week, even if it's just a couple of sentences. This keeps my head in the story so I don't lose momentum. And more often than not, writing those obligatory 'couple of sentences' has gotten my thoughts flowing and turned out quite a bit of work for the day after all. As for that seventh day, sometimes I need to take time away from the story to gain a little perspective or refresh my mind.
2. Stay on track to finish this draft and the related screenplay Quicksilver before November. I'm about two months into this draft and a little over a quarter done. At this rate I should finish in early August and have plenty of time for the screenplay - not that I have to do them in that order, of course.

Photo: aphroditespriestess.blogspot.com

The plan is so simple and general I wasn't confident it would work, but I've been doing it for about two weeks now and it's going great. My writing productivity has shot up and I'm able to relax and enjoy it instead of worrying whether I've done enough yet.

What kind of quotas do you set for yourself? If you use word count, how do you account for time spent on research and the need to cut or consolidate a passage from a previous draft? Or, to put it another way, how do you resist the temptation to be sloppy with your details or leave bloated passages untouched?

(This episode was brought brought to you by the letter Q.)

Guest Post: On an Economy of Words

Please help me welcome our first guest blogger, Dan Moore:

It's time for my ugly little confession. I have held a novel in my hand and nestled back on my couch. I have buried my nose in its pages and surrendered to the author's fantasy. And, I have skipped over entire paragraphs of description out of sheer boredom. Honest. I've done it.

Striking the balance between description and advancing the plot of a story is an important discipline. I know that there are readers out there who just love endless descriptions. They swoon over wordy sentences with convoluted grammatical structure. I am not one of those folks.

I was taught to write for television and radio. In radio, every word counts. In television, you don't need every word. Although writing books does not bear the constraints of broadcast writing, there is wisdom to be found in its economy. Words are like water. Offered to the reader in well-crafted moderation, they are fine drink for the mind. If poured out in excess, the experience can be like water-boarding.

There are writers who can thrill their readers with verbosity, but many of us don't have the talent, or wit, to do it well. That is okay, because employing fewer words doesn't doom us to literary oblivion. One does not have to sacrifice elegance or power when choosing to be brief. Ernest Hemingway is credited with writing a six-word-story. It reads as follows. "Baby shoes, for sale, never worn." A few well-chosen words can be woven into uncommon prose.

Think of writing as a form of hospitality. When you write a story, you are creating a place for your readers to come and visit. You are the host, the storyteller. A good host doesn't bury his or her guests under everything that can be pulled from the closets and attic. The host gives the visitor space to linger and appreciate the environment. Economical writing is the act of being efficient and evocative. It creates space. It is not obsessed with saying everything that comes to mind. It allows the reader to fill the pregnant voids. Compact prose gives them an amazing gift. It gives their imaginations room to embrace your masterpiece.

In some cases, wordy writing suggests that the writer does not want to relinquish control. If everything is overstated, then the purity of the narrative will be protected. I see the reader as a partner in my storytelling. Writing is only half of the relationship. The reader completes the storytelling. Our narrative will always be shaped by the minds of our readers. Our story is impotent if it isn't. Great writing is always a catalyst for the reader's imagination. Catalysts begin the process; they do not subsume it.

Sometimes writers get wordy when they lose focus. Each scene we write has a purpose. Each paragraph plays a part in furthering the scene. Each sentence has a reason. Individual words matter. Staying focused gives us a metric to evaluate each word and sentence. It teaches us what is important and what is not. What does the reader need to know in order to move forward through the world I have created? Do I really need to describe every detail? Once a sentence has accomplished its task, there needs to be a period.

Wordiness threatens the pacing of a narrative. It weighs it down with an unnecessary burden. Every story has rhythm. Good writing is poetic. It breathes. Some scenes move quickly. Others meander, but the plot always moves forward. Economical writing imparts energy. It evokes movement and sustains the reader's interest. If storytelling is a dance, it is much easier to teach a gazelle than a hippopotamus.

Moore later...

Dan Moore lives with his wife Diana near Syracuse, New York. He is a freelance video producer and the proud father of two sons, two daughters-in-law and three grandsons. Dan caught the Science Fiction bug by reading Robert Heinlein’s “Spaceman Jones” when he was in high school. He holds degrees in Electrical Engineering, Theology and Broadcast Production and Writing. He has written three science fiction novels: Meridian's Shadow, The Rings of Alathea and Nixie's Rise.

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