I’m a big fan of language. Proper English and spelling are requirements in my home school. Last week Liberty’s English had her studying possessive nouns and pronouns and I drove a point home. “Possessive pronouns never have apostrophes. Never. Ever. Ever. Do not ever, ever put an apostrophe in hers, his, ours, its… The contractions have an apostrophe but never if they are possessive.”
At this point, the poor girl’s eyes were glazed as she nodded, hoping that I’d quit driving the point home. She doesn’t realize I’m saving her from some really important, grievous error. You know, an improper usage of “it’s” in a Facebook post or some such thing. Grievous.
Two days later, as Liberty handed her report on a Missouri state park to me to be proofread, I said, “You spelled “its” without an apostrophe, Honey. It’s possessive.”
She looked at me in confusion. “Yes…”
“It needs an… oh good grief. Who lets me teach you these things?!”
(Just for the record, I had to fix four English grammar mistakes in proofreading this post. Two were apostrophe errors. I doubt I even caught them all at this point. I’m not cut out for this, it would seem. Or I need a nap. Or both.)
