You Can't Hear Apostrophes

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While working on the second draft of my novel WIP, I noticed something that I didn't when I wrote the first draft.

So, let's say you know a family with the last name Acorn. The Acorn family lives in a house in your neighborhood. Mrs. Acorn owns a car. She also has a kid named...(pausing to Google names)...MyAngel?

Well, Google just told me that someone named their kid MyAngel. Uhh, okay, let me find a different one...(going to Google again)...KVIIIlyn.

Wait. What? Roman numerals for 8—K8lyn=Kaitlyn. Uh.

Forget it.

The kid is named Fred.

Anyway, I'm talking possessives here. So, the following would be correct forms of possessives:

  • Mrs. Acorn's car
  • The Acorns (as in, the family)
  • Fred Acorn's standardized test scores were poor

But what about when you're referring to the residence of the Acorn family? As in, Fred is having a sleepover and MyAngel and KVIIIlyn are telling their parents that they'll be staying the night.

"I'm going over to the Acorn's/Acorns' tonight!"

From what I can tell, it's supposed to be Acorns' because it's a plural possessive kind of like peoples'. The name is Acorn and there are multiples of them, so you pluralize Acorn into Acorns and then make it possessive by adding ' at the end

Back to my WIP, while first drafting, I did both with no rhyme or reason for any of it. I think they're all fixed now, but you gotta be real careful with that, depending on the meaning of the sentence.

And you know what's funny?

If you say it out loud, it doesn't matter.

You can't hear apostrophes.

What's New?

  • Firstly, that whole thing you read above, of course.
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  • I made a new horror short—this time it's sci-fi—called Material Assistants. You might have to be signed-in to YouTube to see it because of violent/disturbing content rules. 🤷 I've seen worse on primetime broadcast television.
  • My friend Eva got the first test-edit back from her photographer on the Night of the Living Cake Monsters cosplay she did. But, it's exclusive to my newsletter people.