S Is for Story: A Writer's Alphabet (Alphabet Books (Sleeping Bear Press))

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This also applies to nouns that look plural even though they’re singular in function (e.g., “politics’ importance,”“the United States’ foreign policy”) and to pluralized versions of names (e.g., “the Johnsons’ car”). Examples: Apostrophe after “s” for plural possessivesMy grandparents’ cat is not very friendly. Plural nouns that end in “s” (most plural nouns) form the possessive with an apostrophe after the “s,” without adding a second “s.” S", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "ess," op. cit. It's been a few years since I read one of Grafton's books. I read R is for Ricochet when it came out, then nothing till last week. Notice how the action in the last sentence is about buying the gift, not giving the gift. To vs. for FAQs

A singular possessive is a noun that is singular and uses apostrophe s like “John’s”. A plural possessive is a noun that is plural and uses apostrophe s like men’s or s apostrophe like boys’. Do I add apostrophe s after s?With regular plurals, the apostrophe is placed at the end, i.e. -s ' is used ( the dog s ’ tails, whereas for singular ‘dog’, the dog ’s tail). Hail and Farewell" - ORIGINAL and BRILLIANT. A 40 year old man has never aged past the age of 10. So, he makes a job of it. He finds lonely childless couples and spends three or so years with each before people start "talking." Then, he boards a train for another random town to find a new couple. People are particularly likely to believe an apostrophe is needed when pluralizing nouns ending in vowel sounds (e.g., “frisbee’s”), numbers or decades (e.g., “1980’s”), surnames (e.g., “Jones’s”), or acronyms (e.g., “TV’s”), but the apostrophe is wrong in all of these contexts. The correct forms are “frisbees,”“1980s,”“Joneses,” and “TVs.” Exception: Pluralizing letters If the explanation is a verb, use to, as in, “learning a language to communicate.” If the explanation is a noun, use for, as in, “learning a language for communication.” We use the apostrophe before the “s” when the noun is singular and we use the apostrophe after the “s” when the noun is plural and ends in s.

Your parents are coming into town tomorrow morning,” Jess said. “We need to clean the house, and it’s got to be done today.” For people whose primary language is not English, collocations can be difficult to remember, especially with prepositions. So below we’ve included a short list of the common words that usually pair with to and for. We’ve also included some popular phrasal verbs to help you understand which words use to and which words use for. Word pairings that use to: Unlike possessive nouns, possessive pronouns do not contain apostrophes. The possessive pronouns are mine, ours, yours, his, hers, its, theirs, and whose. Bradbury is know for his stories of the macabre and life on other planets, especially Mars. This book does not disappoint in that department. Stories such as Chrysalis, Pillar of Fire, Zero Hour, The Man, The Pedestrian, Hail and Farewell, Come Into My Cellar, The Million-Year Picnic, and Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed all fall in this category with some very fine reading and this is where he has the greatest reputation. Ancient Greek did not have a /ʃ/ phoneme, so the derived Greek letter sigma ( Σ) came to represent the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/.

It existed alongside minuscule "round" or "short" s, which was at the time only used at the end of words. Aside from their usage as prepositions and special grammar situations like infinitives and conjunctions, both to and for are also used as parts of phrasal verbs. When used in phrasal verbs, however, they no longer act independently and instead take on the meaning of that particular phrasal verb. When to use to