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​From time to time, members ask about words such as crack'd, bless'd or lov'd. Have the apostrophe rules changed, or are these simply old-fashioned mistakes? ​ The answer is that they're neither. ​ These spellings were once a perfectly normal way of showing that one or more letters had been omitted. Crack'd stands for cracked, bless'd for blessed, and lov'd for loved. The apostrophe tells us that the "e" has disappeared. ​ Writers, poets and printers used these contractions e

​Every so often, an APS member asks a wonderfully awkward question: if can't comes from cannot and won't comes from will not, why is shall not contracted to shan't? Surely it ought to be sha'n't, with two apostrophes? It's a fair question. The answer lies in history rather than logic. ​Originally, both forms existed. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, writers occasionally used sha'n't, with one apostrophe marking the missing letters in shall and the other marking

​Here's a modern apostrophe puzzle that would have baffled Shakespeare. ​ When an initialism becomes a verb, how do we add -ed? Consider these examples: I cc'd everyone in the email. She OK'd the proposal. They RSVP'd yesterday. The apostrophe is there for a good reason. Without it, ccd, OKed and RSVPed look awkward and can be difficult to read. The apostrophe neatly separates the abbreviation from the ending, making it immediately obvious that -d represents the past tense. ​

This article was published in the University of Minnesota Retirees Association newsletter, Spring 2026.

This story in the "Yountville Sun" (a town in northern California) shows the importance of apostrophe placement in a wine-based legal dispute. https://yountvillesun.com/the-apostrophe/ The apostrophe By Richard Puntillo September 11, 2025 In this piece, I want to tell a true story of the importance of the apostrophe. Indeed, the exact placement of an apostrophe was central to a decision of the California Supreme Court. The story begins some 50 years ago in Paris at the inter