Welcome to the last lesson in this series.

I thought we'd finish with the most misused figure of punctuation the English language has. By the term English I include you Americans, South Africans, Aussies and anyone else lucky enough to speak the toughest and most nonsensical language on the planet.

The Apostrophe.

The apostrophe serves two main functions: to replace a missing letter, and to signify ownership or belonging.

You're all familiar with the first use. I've used it in both of these sentences but it's so familiar we rarely notice. I AM, becomes "I'm". YOU ARE becomes "You're". I'm sure that you understand fully. I've used it seven times in this paragraph alone. Count them.

The second use signifies ownership or belonging. "David's hat was on the dresser. The dresser left wearing David's hat". Where the ownership or belonging applies to a collective noun which already ends in an "s", like "soldiers" then the apostrophe FOLLOWS the word:

"The soldiers' bayonets were blunt and useless".

The exception to this is where the collective noun DOESN'T end in an "s", like "children". Here we would have "It rained cats and dogs on the children's annual party".

Another exception, less used correctly, is when a name ends in "s", so something which belongs to James would be James', and something belonging to Jesus would be Jesus'. Although both proper nouns are singular, James's and Jesus's is just wrong and looks it, although I've seen both used in printed material.

The word which causes most consternation is "It's". "It's can only ever mean "IT IS". the word never takes an apostrophe in the possessive. So, "I like this training: it's been near perfect inits execution".

Oddly enough, if you really don't get the it's - its differentiation, it's better (if you're really in a hurry) to leave the apostrophe out altogether rather than put one in where it doesn't belong. People have heard so much about the wrongly placed apostrophe that they're more likely to forgive its omission than it's wrongful inclusion. I don't know how well this translates internationally but we refer to a wrongly placed apostrophe as a grocer's apostrophe. A grocer's apostrophe appears in those hastily scrawled posters outside greengrocers' shops which say:

"Potato's only 25p per lb"; "Cabbage's 80p each" or "Broad bean's only £1 per lb".

Once you get the hang of punctuation you'll find yourself silently screaming every time you pass a shop window and read "Half Price Toy's for Sale".

Well, this course of 16 lessons has reached its end. I think we've covered a lot, but there is much left to dig into. I'm going to spend time developing a web presence offering all of this and more thanks to a suggestion from a reader (Honesty) but I'm happy to answer any questions meanwhile. Thanks for reading and I hope it's been useful. Tick the task boxes, which are only there for fun on this course. It might give some credit.

Cheers

Paul