Apostrophe

“ APOSTROPHE AND QUOTATION.
The Apostrophe is used to abbreviate a word, and also to mark the possessive case of a noun; as, "'tis, for it is; tho,' for though; o'er, for over;" "A man's poverty."
A Quotation marks a sentence taken in the author's own language; as, "The proper study of mankind is man."
When an author represents a person as speaking, the language of that person should be designated by a quotation ”

“ An Apostrophe is a digression from the order of any discourse, and a direct address to the persons of whom it treats, or to those who are to form a judgment respecting the subject of which it treats.—Lord. Example.—“Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom: give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.” Isa. 1:10.
32. An Allegory is a narrative in which the subject of the discourse is described by an analogous subject, resembling it in its characteristics and circumstances—the subject of which it is descriptive being indicated in its connection. ”

“ This noble apostrophe, by which the poet concludes the Essay in an address to his friend, will furnish a critic with examples of every one of those five species of elocution, from which, as from its sources, Longinus deduceth the sublime.
1. The first and chief is a grandeur and sublimity of conception:
Come then, my friend! ”

“ Search for examples of these two figures in the selections in Journeys Through Bookland. Both are elusive, and at first you are apt to pass over many without noticing them. As you continue your search and grow keen in it you will be surprised to see how common they are, both in what you read and in your own speech.
Apostrophe and Personification. An address to a person or thing, absent or dead, is an apostrophe, and when an inanimate object is assumed to be alive or an animate object is assumed to be raised to a higher plane of existence it is said to be by personification. ”

“ Use the apostrophe in possessives and use it in the proper place: the boy's clothes, boys' clothes, Burns' poems, Fox's Martyrs, Agassiz's works, ours, yours, theirs, hers, its (but "it's" for it is) . George and John's father was a good man; Jack's and Samuel's fathers were not.
Do not use the apostrophe when making a plural of figures, etc.: all the 3s, the Three Rs. ”

“ In addition to the periodicals given above, The Atlantic, Scribner’s Monthly, Lippincott’s Magazine, Popular Science Monthly, Galaxy, N. A. Review, London Quarterly, British Quarterly, Fortnightly Review, use the additional s. The Westminster omits the additional s. In the Contemporary and Edinburgh Review, the s is used by some writers and omitted by others.
2. In the plural of nouns, the apostrophe and s are used to denote possession, when the word does not end in s; as, men’s deeds. If the word ends in s, the apostrophe only is used ”

“ Principal among such figures employed by amateurs are the long complex metaphors and similes in which epic poetry delights; the figure of apostrophe, too, is much affected by tyros, because it affords them opportunity to coin orotund phrases concerning the irony of fate, the haplessness of true lovers, and kindred favorite topics. ”

“ So, in the solemn style, we write seemest, deemest, swimmest, like seemeth, deemeth, swimmeth, and so forth; but, when we use the form which has no increase of syllables, why is an apostrophe more necessary in the second person, than in the third?--in seemst, deemst, swimst, than in seems, deems, swims? When final e is dropped from the verb, the case is different; as,
"Thou cutst my head off with a golden axe, And smil'st upon the stroke that murders me."--Shakspeare. OBS. 22.--Dr. Lowth supposes the verbal termination s or es to have come from a contraction of eth. ”

“ Use an apostrophe after the s to form the possessive of plural nouns.
Wrong. They sell boys clothing.
Wrong. They sell boy’s clothing.
Right. They sell boys’ clothing.
855. Never use an apostrophe to form the possessive of personal pronouns.
Wrong. Their’s are black.
Right. Theirs are black.
856. Use parentheses ( ) to inclose material that is foreign to the main thought of a sentence, paragraph, or whole composition.
Right. They will (I saw the order myself) withdraw the Second battalion tomorrow.
857. Use parentheses to inclose figures that confirm numerical adjectives. ”

“ But if no vowel ever stood in the place of this apostrophe, which seems to be the fact, the apostrophe itself has been needlessly and improperly introduced.
[112] I much doubt the propriety of joining the Conjunction ged to the Fut. Affirm.; as, ge do gheibh na h-uile dhaoine oilbheum, though all men shall be offended, Matt. xxvi. 33. It should rather have been, ged fhaigh na h-uile dhaoine, &c. The Fut. Subj. seems to be equally improper; as, ge do ghlaodhas iad rium, though they shall cry to me, Jer. xi. 21, Edit. 1786. Rather, ged ghlaodh iad rium, as in Hosea, xi. 7. ”

“ LESSON 148. SUMMARY OF RULES—CONTINUED. THE DASH, MARKS OF PARENTHESIS, APOSTROPHE, HYPHEN, QUOTATION MARKS, AND BRACKETS. +Dash+.—Use the dash where there is an omission (1) of letters or figures, and (2) of such words as as, namely, or that is, introducing illustrations or equivalent expressions. Use the dash (3) where the sentence breaks off abruptly, and the same thought is resumed after a slight suspension, or another takes its place; and (4) before a word or phrase repeated at intervals for emphasis. ”

“ Instructions are often obeyed, greatly to the amusement of everybody in the office, including the battery boy and the devil.
ABBREVIATIONS IN GENERAL.
13. Anno Domini should be printed with small capitals when abbreviated as A. D.
14. Apostrophes for Plural of Letters Wrong. De Vinne aptly says on page 285 of Correct Composition that the apostrophe is not proper to express plurality. Its use in print for this purpose is the repetition of an indefensible colloquialism, even though the dictionaries record the form. Letters should be spelled as follows ”

“ She said, “Jane replied, ‘Jim’s remark, “Iowa has a hard schedule next year,” does not mean what you think it means.’”
850. Include periods and commas at the end of quoted material within the quotation marks, but treat other marks of punctuation according to the context of the passage.
851. Underscore names of books, plays, musical compositions, paintings, and pieces of sculpture. Do not use quotation marks.
George Eliot’s Silas Marner has been read by thousands.
[148]
852. Use an apostrophe (’) to mark the omission of letters in contracted words. ”

“ I might even say that the rhyme is there in the theme, thought, and image themselves. Ask the fact for the form. For a verse is not a vehicle to carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a case: the verse must be alive, and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of man inspires and directs the body; and we measure the inspiration by the music. In reading prose, I am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags; but in poetry, as soon as one word drags. Ever as the thought mounts, the expression mounts. ”

“ O'er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies." The chief mean of attaining general harmony in verse is a free and happy distribution of the vowel-sounds. For producing a special harmony, consonant with special signification, other rules require to be followed. But, in the first place, let us look particularly to the means of rendering verse simply and aggregately 182melodious. ”

“ Language in general includes the following parts:—Letter, Syllable, Connecting word, Noun, Verb, Inflexion or Case, Sentence or Phrase.
A Letter is an indivisible sound, yet not every such sound, but only one which can form part of a group of sounds. For even brutes utter indivisible sounds, none of which I call a letter. The sound I mean may be either a vowel, a semi-vowel, or a mute. A vowel is that which without impact of tongue or lip has an audible sound. ”

“ I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,—to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part! ”

“ The brilliant phrase, like good wine, needs no bush. But just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising or lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweller—an excusable love of one's art, not all mere vanity, I like to think"—all this with the most pleasant smile and manner. ”

“ We can easily understand that the system of inflection, however useful in itself, prevents the possibility of one part of speech being used for another. In English, ‘love’ may be a noun or a verb; but in Latin or French, we must use ‘amare’ or ‘aimer’ for the verb, and ‘amor’ or ‘amour’ for the noun. This power of using one part of speech for another, exists to such an extent in English, that it may be almost said, that every word in the language may be applied in a variety of senses and grammatical constructions. ”

“ Who spoke of “wind” as “wined,”
And yet we use it, on the whole,
To rhyme to “find” and “blind.”
We say, “Now don’t do that agen,”
When people give us pain;
In poetry, nine times in ten,
It rhymes to “Spain” or “Dane.” ”

“ In this way the Romans expressed differences in tense, mood, voice, person, and number.
120. The Tenses. The different forms of a verb referring to different times are called its tenses. The chief distinctions of time are present, past, and future:
121. The Moods. Verbs have inflection of mood to indicate the manner in which they express action. The moods of the Latin verb are the indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and infinitive.
a. A verb is in the indicative mood when it makes a statement or asks a question about something assumed as a fact. ”

“ In the sentence,—“Like to an angel of peace she seemed that day,” how shall we dispose of to if we call like a preposition governing angel?
If we go back to the writings of Milton and Shakespeare, we find the words liker and likest, showing plainly that in their time like was looked upon as an adjective or adverb. We often find, too, the preposition to or unto expressed after like. It is best, therefore, to dispose of like as an adjective, meaning similar, when it introduces a phrase modifying a noun or completing a verb; and as an adverb, when the phrase modifies a verb. ”

“ To make verse speak the language of prose without being prosaic—to marshal the words of it in such an order as they might naturally take in falling from the lips of an extemporary speaker, yet without meanness, harmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming to displace a syllable for the sake of the rhyme, is one of the most arduous tasks a poet can undertake. ”

“ But these letters in verse, although perfect in quality, vivacious and eloquent as only the writings of a man who speaks of things that concern himself can be, yet are letters, confessions, autobiography: they are not pure poetry; their metrical form is to them something of a delicate pleasing whim, in harmony with such a definition of the soul. ”

“ To marre the subiect that before was well,
For to no other passe my verses tend,
Then of your graces and your gifts to tell.
And more, much more then in my verse can sit,
Your owne glasse showes you, when you looke in it. ”

“ In quoting poetical extracts of more than one stanza, the opening quotation marks should be used at the beginning of each stanza, the closing marks only at the end of the extract.
In sentences terminating in the close of a quotation and an exclamation point or an interrogation point, do not quote the punctuation mark unless it is part of the quotation:—
How absurd to call this stripling a “man”! But
He cried out, “Wake up! something is going wrong!” Can we by any mistake call him a “man”? But
One is crazed by his “Now, then, where am I to go?” ”

“ FATHER GERARD HOPKINS, S. J.
WHY didst thou carve thy speech laboriously,
⁠And match and blend thy words with curious art?
⁠For Song, one saith, is but a human heart
Speaking aloud, undisciplined and free. ”

“ Inflexions of Verbs.—Verbs have inflexions to denote Person, Number, Tense, Mood, and Voice.
§ 55. Person.—The inflexions of Person are three, corresponding to the three Personal Pronouns; as, (1) ăm ō I-love, (2) ăm-ās thou-lovest, (3) ăm-ăt he-loves.
§ 56. Number.—The inflexions of a Verb vary according as the subject is Singular or Plural; as, Sing. hŏmō̆ am-ăt the-man loves, Plur. hŏmĭnēs ăm-ant the-men love.
§ 57. Tense.—Tenses show the time at which the action of the Verb takes place.
Latin has six Tenses: Present, Future, Future-Perfect, Perfect, Imperfect, Pluperfect. ”

“ As a verb it has an adverb modifier, sweetly, and as a noun it names an act and takes a possessive modifier.
This form of the verb is called the +Participle+ (Lat. pars, a part, and capere, to take) because it partakes of two natures and performs two offices—those of a verb and an adjective, or those of a verb and a noun. (For definition see Lesson 131.)
Singing birds delight us. Here singing has lost its verbal nature, and expresses a permanent quality of birds—telling what kind of birds,—and consequently is a mere adjective. The singing of the birds delights us. ”

“ The preceding poem, while it places in a new light the immortal history of the hatchet, also illustrates the wonderful adaptability of the English language to the purposes of the poet. Thus, in the last stanza, a rhyme is required for “down,” while the sense demands the word “man” at the end of the corresponding line. ”