the pattern analysis of the apostrophe

How do I start to write about the apostrophe? and how might it present problems to learners?

[RonBee]

Most mistakes with apostrophes occur with pronouns, especially possessive pronouns. For example, the word for belonging to it is its, not it's. Also, the word for belonging to us is ours, not our's.

Apostrophes are not normally used to make plurals, and and you should never use an apostrophe to pluralize a word. For example, the plural of apple is apples, not apple's. The plural of orange is oranges, not orange's.

:)

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by karrieb

How do I start to write about the apostrophe? and how might it present problems to learners?

I would start with the main uses of apostrophes:

1. To show possession
2. To mark missing letters in a word, as in contractions.
3. To show plurals of lower case letters, numbers, and some acronyms/initialisms.

As Ron said, the main problems occur with mixing up contractions and possessives and using them in possessive pronouns such as its and theirs.