Skype121English
That's great, I wish you well with your English
Eternal Learner
Ohhhhh this is good!
I was looking all over the internet last week for the 's, ' and s's stuff. I was more confused after reading 10 pages than before.
But you made it clear in a few sentences. Thank you!!!!
Here’s a quick recap on apostrophes in case you are rusty! They can often mean a letter is missing, e.g. can’t (letters have been removed from ‘cannot’) or they can signal possession. The apostrophe falls before the ‘s’ for singular nouns: so, if Madonna buys a Ferrari, the Ferrari is Madonna’s (lucky her!), but then the mansion is The Beatles’ with an apostrophe after the ‘s’. The bit you might find a bit more confusing is; have you seen anything like this- ‘Jones’s Bakery’? If you have a singular item that ends in an ‘s,’ you still need to add an apostrophe and an extra ‘s’- this lets the reader know that there is no such thing as a ‘Jone’ but instead we’re looking at a single object that ends with ‘s’. So don’t forget to give ‘Keats’s poems’ every ‘s’ they deserve!
If you’ve heard these words pop up you might be wondering if they’re just a misspelling of ‘while’ and ‘among’. Well, let’s dispel the myth! These are very old spellings that have been in English for a long time, and to be honest, grammar experts like to argue about when they can be used. Back when Shakespeare was writing, this was important, but today we can make life easy! You can use ‘while’ and ‘whilst’ interchangeably as conjunctions ‘Whilst I was singing I felt thirsty’ but only ‘while’ can be a noun ‘I’ll be back in a while.’ You can use ‘among’ and ‘amongst’ totally interchangeably without fear! ‘Whilst’ and ‘amongst’ are definitely more traditional and formal, and, because of that, they are seen as very old fashioned in US English, but you can definitely still hear them in the UK- we like to be traditional now and again!
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