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This is probably the most abused of all forms of punctuation. No one will take your business letter seriously if you cannot master its use.

There are two main, and quite separate, uses for the apostrophe.

1 It is used to denote possession:

The boy’s football

My mother’s bag

2 It is also used to show the omission of a letter or letters:

I’ve been to the shops.

What’s on my sister’s T-shirt?

Never confuse the two.

When in doubt, ask yourself if the object in question belongs to anybody. This is not complicated. The football belongs to the boy. The bag belongs to the mother.

Most confusion arises out of the word its, meaning belonging to it. It is occasionally confused with it’s, which is an abbreviation of the two words it is or it has. The abbreviation in it’s merely indicates the absence of the letter ‘i’ .

Ask yourself: can this word be replaced by ‘it is’ or ‘it has’?

If it cannot, then it must be its without an apostrophe.