Apostrophes & Quotes: Possessives, Its or It's & Quotation Marks

For beginners · ages 5–8

What an apostrophe shows

An apostrophe is a small mark that floats high up, next to the letters: '. It looks like a comma that has jumped up in the air. It has two jobs.

Look at the last row. "Cats" ends in s, but nothing is owned and nothing is missing. So it has no apostrophe.

Asking "is something owned, or are letters missing?" is the first step of the mark check you will build up, section by section, until it gets its full name in Section 8.

Here are more apostrophes at work. For each one, ask: is this a name tag, or a gap?

Notice that one sentence can have both jobs in it. "Kofi's kite didn't fly" has a name tag on Kofi and a gap in "did not".

Now look at words that end in s and have no apostrophe: "two cats", "three pens", "lots of mangoes". Each one just means more than one. There is no owner and no gap. So there is no apostrophe.

When you see an apostrophe, you should always be able to say its job out loud: "this shows an owner" or "this shows letters missing". If you cannot say either one, the apostrophe does not belong.

Picture two little helpers who carry apostrophes. One carries a name tag and pins it on whoever owns something - Riya's, Tom's, the cat's. The other carries a tiny patch and sticks it over a hole where letters fell out - don't, I'm, can't. If neither helper has a job to do, no apostrophe goes on the word.

The word "apostrophe" comes from an old Greek word about turning away or leaving something out. That fits the second job very well - showing where letters have been left out. Printers used the mark for missing letters first, and the owner job grew up later. You will meet that history in the Master band. For now, keep both jobs side by side. Both jobs can even sit side by side in one sentence.

Here is a tricky one, and it is fine to find it tricky. The same word, with and without an apostrophe, can mean two different things. "The cat's bowl is empty." "The cats are asleep." In the first, the bowl belongs to one cat. "Cat's" is a name tag, so it has an apostrophe. In the second, there is more than one cat, and nobody owns anything. "Cats" just means more than one, so it has no apostrophe. Both words end in s. Both sound the same when you say them. You cannot tell which one you need by listening. So you have to ask what the word is doing in the sentence. Is something after it that belongs to it - a bowl, a bag, a ball? Then it is an owner, and it takes an apostrophe. Is it just telling you there is more than one? Then no apostrophe. A good trick: say it the long way. "The bowl that belongs to the cat" makes sense, so you need "the cat's bowl". Now try "the cats are asleep". What belongs to the cats? Nothing - the word after "cats" is "are", and "are" is not a thing anyone can own. So there is no owner, and no apostrophe.

Did you know that one tiny mark can change what a whole sentence means? "My sister's friends are here." "My sisters' friends are here." "My sisters are here." Say them aloud. They all sound almost exactly the same! In the first, you have one sister, and her friends have come. In the second, you have more than one sister, and their friends have come - you will learn that one in Practice. In the third, your sisters themselves have come, with no friends at all. The only way a reader can tell which one you mean is the apostrophe - whether there is one, and where it sits. That is a lot of work for something so small.

An apostrophe floats up high, next to the letters. It is not a comma. A comma sits down on the line. If you write it too low, it can look like a comma, so lift it up. A few words end in s and are not more-than-one words at all - "bus", "gas", "yes". They take no apostrophe either unless something belongs to them or letters are missing. There are a small number of rare cases where an apostrophe is used in other ways - you will meet them in the Craft band. For everything in Discover, the two jobs are all you need.

1. Remember an apostrophe has two jobs: an owner, or letters missing.
2. Before you add an apostrophe, say its job out loud.
3. If something belongs to someone, add 's to the owner's name: Riya's bag.
4. If two words are squeezed into one, put the apostrophe where the letters dropped out: don't.
5. If a word just means more than one, add s with no apostrophe: two cats.
6. Do not add an apostrophe "just in case".
7. Write the apostrophe high up, next to the letters, not down on the line.
8. Check each apostrophe in your writing by asking: owner, or letters missing?
9. When you read, notice each apostrophe you meet and name its job - it trains your eye for your own writing.

• Riya's bag is by the door.
• I don't like cold tea.
• Dadi's shawl is warm, and it's soft too.
• Tom's dog can't sit still.
• Lucy has two cats and a hamster.
• Kofi's kite didn't fly.

• Meera's cup is empty.
• Ravi, we're late for the bus.
• Nani's garden has ten mango trees.
• I'm going to Ben's house.
• Grace doesn't like the rain.
• Yuki's boots are red.

One owner

To show one owner, you need three pieces, always in this order.

The name tag goes on the owner, not on the thing. "The cat's bowl" is right. "The cat bowl's" puts the tag on the bowl, and the bowl does not own anything.

Finding the owner is how the mark check starts for this job - it gets its full name in Section 8.

Here is how to build an owner phrase from the long way round.

Notice two things.

First, the owner's word does not change. "Puppy" stays "puppy", and you add 's on the end: "the puppy's ball". You do not change the y or drop any letters.

Second, an owner does not have to be a person. Animals own things too: the dog's tail, the bird's nest. Even a thing can have a part that belongs to it: the book's cover, the tree's leaves.

To check, turn it back the long way round. "The puppy's ball" - the ball that belongs to the puppy. Yes. If the long way makes sense, your name tag is in the right place.

Picture a train with two carriages. The front carriage is the owner - Dadi. Between the carriages is a little hook, and that hook is the 's. The back carriage is the thing that is owned - the shawl. The hook is always fixed to the front carriage, and the owner always goes first.

Long ago, English showed an owner by adding -es to the end of a word, a bit like "the kinges crown" for "the king's crown". Over time the e stopped being said and written, and the apostrophe came in where it used to be. So the 's you write today has a very long history - you will meet it again in the Master band. The idea of a name tag on the owner has stayed the same the whole time.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes 's does not show an owner at all. "Riya's bag is red." "Riya's late today." They look alike. Both have Riya's. But say them the long way round. "The bag that belongs to Riya is red." That works. So "Riya's bag" is an owner. "The late that belongs to Riya today"? That makes no sense. Try "Riya is late today." Yes! So "Riya's late" is not an owner. It is "Riya is", squeezed together, with the i of "is" left out. That is the other apostrophe job - letters missing. So you cannot always tell the job from the 's alone. Look at what comes next. If a thing comes next - a bag, a kite, a shawl - it is probably an owner. If you can say "is" in its place - "Riya is late", "Tom is here" - it is letters missing. Either way, the apostrophe is right. It just has a different job. Section 3 is all about the missing-letters job.

Did you know that a single 's can make a funny difference? "I saw Anil's dog." "I saw Anil, a dog." The first is a dog that belongs to Anil. The second makes it sound as if Anil is a dog! And look at this one: "My friend's cake was lovely." With the name tag, it is the cake that belongs to your friend. Without it - "My friend cake was lovely" - it sounds like a cake called "friend cake". Tiny marks carry big meaning. A name tag in the right place tells the reader exactly who owns what, so nobody gets called a dog by mistake.

This section is about one owner whose name does not end in s. Names that already end in s, like "James", are a little different, and both "James's" and "James'" are used - you will meet them in Practice. More than one owner, like "the girls' room", is also in Practice. And remember that 's does not always show an owner. "Riya's here" means "Riya is here". Read on to see what comes next before you decide.

1. Find the owner first: who or what does the thing belong to?
2. Add 's straight onto the owner's word: Dadi's.
3. Put the thing that is owned right after it: Dadi's shawl.
4. Do not change the owner's spelling - just add 's.
5. Keep the apostrophe high and joined to the s, with no space.
6. Never put the 's on the thing that is owned.
7. Check it the long way round: "the shawl that belongs to Dadi".
8. If you can say "is" in its place, it is a missing-letters apostrophe, not an owner.
9. If a name already ends in s, wait for Practice - that case has two accepted spellings.

• Dadi's shawl is on the chair.
• The cat's bowl is empty.
• Kabir's bike has a flat tyre.
• Ben's lunchbox is blue.
• The teacher's desk is by the window.
• Amara's drum is very loud.

• Nani's garden is full of roses.
• The puppy's ball rolled away.
• Papa's phone is ringing.
• The book's cover is torn.
• Emma's kite is stuck in the tree.
• Mei's grandmother makes dumplings.

Letters left out

A short form, or contraction, squeezes two words into one. Some letters drop out, and the apostrophe goes in their place.

Look at every "not" word. The o always drops out, and the apostrophe always sits between the n and the t.

Asking "which letters are missing?" is one half of the mark check you are building - it gets its full name in Section 8.

Here are more short forms. Say the long form aloud each time, then look for the gap.

Now the odd one out. "Will not" becomes won't. The word changes shape a little more than the others - "will" turns into "wo". But the apostrophe still does the same job: it sits where the o of "not" dropped out.

One word, "cannot", is already a single word before it is shortened. It still loses letters - the n and the o - and the apostrophe goes in the gap: can't.

Whatever the short form, the question is always the same: what is the long form, and which letters are missing? The apostrophe goes in the gap, and nowhere else.

Picture two words walking close together, holding hands. As they squeeze up, one or two letters get pushed out of the line and wander off. The apostrophe steps into the empty spot to hold their place, like a friend saving a seat. You can always find the apostrophe by asking: whose seat is it saving?

The word "contraction" means drawing something together, making it smaller. Your muscles contract when they pull in tight. A contraction in grammar pulls two words in tight, and a few letters get squeezed out on the way. The apostrophe for missing letters is the older of its two jobs - printers were using it this way hundreds of years ago. Some short forms, like won't, have changed shape along the way.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Some short forms can stand for two different long forms. "It's raining." - it is raining. "It's been a long day." - it has been a long day. "She's here." - she is here. "She's gone home." - she has gone home. "I'd like tea." - I would like tea. "I'd seen it before." - I had seen it before. In each pair, the short form looks exactly the same. The apostrophe is doing the same job - marking letters that are missing. But the missing letters are different. How do you tell which one it is? Say both long forms and listen. "It is been a long day" sounds wrong. "It has been a long day" sounds right. So that "it's" is "it has". The good news: for punctuation, it does not matter which one it is. Both are letters missing, and both keep their apostrophe in the same place. You only need to know the long form so that you understand the sentence.

Did you know that "won't" is the odd one out of all the "not" words? "Do not" is don't. "Is not" is isn't. "Did not" is didn't. You just take away the o. So you might expect "will not" to be "willn't". But nobody says that. Instead we say "won't". Long ago, people often said "wol" or "wul" for "will", and "wol not" was squeezed down over time into "won't". The old word changed, and the short form stayed. So "won't" is like a fossil - a little piece of old English hiding in something you say every day. And even inside this odd word, the apostrophe is still doing its normal job, sitting where the o of "not" used to be.

Short forms are perfectly correct English. You will see them in stories, letters, messages and many books. Some very formal writing avoids them, and some teachers ask for long forms in certain tasks - that is about style, not about right or wrong punctuation. A few short forms can mean two things - "it's" can be "it is" or "it has". The apostrophe goes in the same place either way. "Won't" changes shape more than the others, and "can't" comes from the single word "cannot". Learn them as they are.

1. Say the long form first: do not, I am, is not.
2. Find the letter or letters that drop out.
3. Put the apostrophe exactly in the gap, not where the words join.
4. For every "not" word, the apostrophe goes between the n and the t.
5. Keep the apostrophe high, next to the letters, with no spaces.
6. Learn the odd ones by heart: can't (cannot) and won't (will not).
7. If you are not sure, say the short form slowly and point at the missing sound.
8. Check each short form by turning it back into the long form.
9. Read your short forms aloud - if you can hear the two long words, the apostrophe belongs in the gap.

• Riya, don't touch the stove.
• I'm going to Nani's house.
• Arjun can't find the ball.
• We're ready, Miss Hill.
• Jack didn't hear the bell.
• Kofi isn't at home.

• Let's play cricket, Farhan.
• It's hot in Chennai today.
• Zoya won't eat the peas.
• Oliver, I've lost my hat.
• Ruby's friends aren't here yet.
• Yuki doesn't like thunder.

More than one? No apostrophe

A plural is a word that means more than one. Most plurals just add s or es. None of them need an apostrophe.

Notice that some plurals change their spelling - baby becomes babies, bus becomes buses. They change letters, but they still get no apostrophe.

Owner, letters missing, or just more than one? That question is at the heart of the mark check, which gets its full name in Section 8.

The tricky part is that a plural and an owner can sound exactly the same. Look at them side by side.

In the left column, the s word is followed by what the dogs did, or it comes at the end. Nothing belongs to it. In the right column, the s word is followed by a thing it owns.

So look at the next word. Is it a thing that belongs to this word? Then it is an owner and needs 's. Is it something the word does, or nothing at all? Then it is just more than one, and it needs no apostrophe.

And a plural word stays a plural when it has a number or "some" or "lots of" in front of it: some books, lots of toys, ten pens.

Picture a crowd of ducks walking in a line. There are lots of them, but none of them is carrying anything and none of them has lost a feather. Nobody needs a name tag, and nobody needs a patch. Just ducks, lots of ducks. Now one duck picks up a bread roll. That duck, and only that duck, gets a name tag: the duck's roll.

The word "plural" comes from an old word meaning "more". Its partner is "singular", which means just one. In English, most plurals add s or es. A few change inside: one child, two children; one mouse, two mice; one foot, two feet. Whatever a plural looks like, it only tells you how many. It never tells you who owns what, so it never needs an apostrophe for being a plural.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. A word can be a plural in one sentence and an owner in the next - and sound exactly the same. "The boys are playing." "The boy's ball is lost." In the first sentence, there is more than one boy, and the next word is "are" - something the boys are doing. Nothing is owned. No apostrophe. In the second sentence, the next word is "ball", and the ball belongs to the boy. That is an owner. It needs 's. Now try this one: "The cats sleep in Dadi's room." Two words end in s: "cats" and "Dadi's". "Cats" is followed by "sleep" - something the cats do. So "cats" is just more than one. "Dadi's" is followed by "room" - a thing that belongs to Dadi. So "Dadi's" is an owner. Some words can be both at once - more than one, and owners too. "The boys' football" means a football that belongs to more than one boy. That spelling, with the apostrophe after the s, is a job for Practice. In Discover, if a word just means more than one and nothing belongs to it, it gets no apostrophe.

Did you know that people have been writing "apple's" and "banana's" on signs for a very long time? It is such a well-known slip that some people jokingly call it the grocer's apostrophe, because it turns up so often on fruit and vegetable signs. You might see "potato's", "carrot's" or "fresh lime's" written up in big letters. Here is a funny thing about the name. "The grocer's apostrophe" uses an apostrophe correctly! It is the apostrophe that belongs to the grocer - one owner, 's. So the name of the mistake is spelled right, and the mistake is spelled wrong. Keep your eyes open: once you know about it, you will start seeing it everywhere.

A tiny number of rare plurals do use an apostrophe, mostly for single letters, such as "mind your p's and q's". You will meet those in the Craft band. For ordinary words, a plural never needs one. A word can be a plural and an owner at the same time - "the girls' room" - and that is a Practice job. Some plurals have more than one accepted spelling, such as "mangoes" and "mangos". Both are fine - neither takes an apostrophe.

1. For more than one, add s or es - and nothing else.
2. Ask: does something belong to this word? Are any letters missing?
3. If both answers are no, leave the apostrophe out.
4. Look at the next word: a thing owned means an owner; an action or nothing means a plural.
5. Change the spelling where you need to - babies, buses - but still add no apostrophe.
6. Never add an apostrophe "just in case".
7. Check signs, labels and lists with extra care - plurals hide there.
8. If you see "egg's" on a sign, you now know how to fix it: eggs.
9. When a plural and an owner sit in one sentence, test each word on its own.

• Two mangoes fell from the tree.
• Asha has three brothers.
• Dadi's hens laid six eggs.
• The buses are late today.
• Sam fed the ducks.
• Kofi has two kites.

• The babies are asleep.
• Arjun's aunt sells tomatoes.
• We made paper boats in the rain.
• Ella has two puppies.
• The dog's lead is on the hook.
• Yuki counted the stars.

Its or it's?

These two words sound the same. They do different jobs.

The belonging words - his, her, its, our, their, my, your - never take an apostrophe.

The "it is" test is the mark check's missing-letters question, asked about one tricky word - the Mark Test gets its full name in Section 8.

Why does "its" have no apostrophe when "the dog's" does? Look at the belonging words all together.

These are special words that already mean "belonging to". They do not need a name tag, because they are name tags. "Its" belongs in that family, so it has no apostrophe either.

Names and naming words are different. "Riya", "the dog" and "the school" are not belonging words, so they need the 's name tag to show an owner: Riya's bag, the dog's bowl.

So there are two different families:

Naming words add 's to own something: the dog's tail.
Belonging words already own, and take no apostrophe: its tail.

Picture a word called "it" standing next to two doors. Through one door, "it" squeezes up close with the word "is" - that door is labelled "it's", and a patch covers the missing i. Through the other door, "it" is holding something it owns, like a tail or a nest - that door is labelled "its", with no patch, because nothing is missing.

Words like my, your, his, her, its, our and their have a name. They are called possessive determiners, and they come in front of a naming word to show who it belongs to. You do not need to learn the long name yet. Just remember that they are a family, and the whole family goes without apostrophes. Long ago, "its" was sometimes written "it's" - but for a very long time now, "its" has been the only standard spelling.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. "It's" can stand for two different things: "it is" and "it has". "It's cold today." - It is cold today. "It's been raining all day." - It has been raining all day. "It's got four legs." - It has got four legs. So the test is really: can you say "it is" OR "it has" in its place? If either one works, write "it's". Now try a tricky sentence with both words in it: "It's lost its collar." The first word: "It has lost..." - yes, that works. So "it's". The second word: "lost it is collar"? "lost it has collar"? No. The collar belongs to it. So "its". Some sentences even use both in a row: "It's time for the cat to have its dinner." "It is time" - it's. "Have it is dinner" - no - its. Take each one on its own, and run the test on each. The test never fails.

Did you know that "its" used to be spelled with an apostrophe? A few hundred years ago, some writers did write "it's" to mean "belonging to it". It made sense to them - after all, "the dog's" has an apostrophe. But slowly, printers and writers settled on "its" with no apostrophe, to match "his" and "her", and to keep it apart from "it's" meaning "it is". That was a long time ago. Today, "its" for belonging is the only spelling you will see in careful writing, and "it's" means "it is" or "it has". So when a grown-up writes "it's tail" today, they are not being old-fashioned. They are making one of the commonest slips in the English language.

In very old books you may see "it's" used for "belonging to it". That spelling has not been standard for a very long time. "Its'" is never correct - there is no such word. Sometimes "it's" means "it has", not "it is": "It's been fun." The test still works - try both "it is" and "it has". "Its" is always a belonging word. If you cannot put a thing after it that belongs to it - its tail, its nest - check again.

1. Say "it is" or "it has" in its place.
2. If either one makes sense, write it's.
3. If neither makes sense, write its.
4. Remember: its is a belonging word, like his and her - no apostrophe.
5. After its, there is usually a thing that belongs to it: its tail, its nest.
6. Never write its' - there is no such word.
7. When a sentence has both, test each one on its own.
8. Check every its and it's in your writing before you hand it in.
9. Remember that his, her, our, their, my and your have no apostrophes either - its joins that family.

• It's raining in Mumbai.
• The cow swished its tail.
• Riya's kite lost its string.
• It's Ben's turn now.
• The dog wagged its tail.
• It's been a long day, Mei.

• It's hot in Delhi, and the dog is in its kennel.
• Asha's school has its sports day today.
• It's Nani's birthday!
• Jack's tree dropped its leaves.
• It's cold, Lucy.
• The kitten chased its tail, and Kofi laughed.

Speech marks

Speech marks come in pairs: one to open, one to close. They look like two tiny commas floating up high: " ".

Notice that the "who spoke" words can come after the speech or before it. Either way, they stay outside the marks.

"Are these someone's exact words?" is the second question of the mark check - it gets its full name, the Mark Test, in Section 8.

Here is the big question to ask: are these the exact words someone said?

When the writer tells us about what someone said, in the writer's own words, there are no speech marks. Often you will see the word "that" or "to": "said that...", "told us to...". This is called reported speech, and you will meet it again in Practice.

When the writer gives us the person's exact words, like a recording, speech marks go round them.

And the exact words keep their own apostrophes. "It's time for tea" has it's inside the speech marks, because Dadi said "it is" the short way. The apostrophe does its job; the speech marks do theirs.

Picture a little fence around a garden. Inside the fence are the exact words a person said, growing like flowers - nobody else's words are allowed in. Outside the fence, on the path, stand the words that tell you who spoke: "said Kabir", "asked Grace". The speech marks are the two gates of the fence, one at each end.

Speech marks have three names. Many teachers call them speech marks, when they hold spoken words. Books about writing often call them quotation marks, because they also hold words quoted from a book or a sign. And some people call them inverted commas, because each mark looks like a comma turned upside down and lifted up. All three names mean the same marks.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes the exact words and the telling words sound almost the same. "I'm tired," said Mum. Mum said that she was tired. In the first, we have Mum's exact words: "I'm tired". They go inside speech marks. In the second, the writer is telling us about it. Notice what changed. "I'm" became "she was". The words are no longer Mum's own - they are the writer's. So there are no speech marks. Here is a test you can use. Imagine you had a recording of what the person said. Would you hear exactly these words? If you would hear "I'm tired", then those words go in speech marks. You would never hear Mum say "she was tired" about herself - so that sentence has none. And watch for "that". "Mum said that..." is almost always the writer telling us, not Mum's exact words. This is a big idea that grows in Practice, where you will learn to turn exact words into telling words and back again.

Did you know that speech marks do not look the same everywhere? In many books printed in India and in America, speech marks are double: "Hello," said Tom. In many books printed in Britain, they are single: 'Hello,' said Tom. Both are correct! They are just different habits, called styles. In this chapter we use double marks, like most Indian school books. If you see single ones in a book from Britain, the writer has not made a mistake. And in other languages, speech marks can look completely different. French books often use little double arrows, like « Bonjour ». Japanese books use corner brackets, like 「 」. The marks change shape, but the job is always the same - showing the exact words someone said.

There are two styles of speech marks. Double marks ("...") are common in Indian and American school books. Single marks ('...') are common in British books. Both are correct - just pick one and use it all the way through a piece of writing. Some books, especially for older readers, leave speech marks out altogether and show speech in other ways. You will meet that in the Master band. Speech marks can also hold words quoted from a book or a sign - you will meet that later too.

1. Find the exact words the person said.
2. Put an opening speech mark just before the first spoken word.
3. Put a closing speech mark just after the last spoken word and its end mark.
4. Keep "said", "asked" and the name outside the marks.
5. Always close what you open - speech marks come in pairs.
6. If the writer is telling us what someone said, with "that", use no speech marks.
7. Keep any apostrophes inside the speech: "It's late," said Dadi.
8. Use one style - double or single - all the way through.
9. When you are not sure, imagine a recording of the person talking and copy only what you would hear.

• "I'm hungry," said Kabir.
• "Wash your hands," said Nani.
• Riya said, "Let's play."
• "The bus is late," said Tom.
• "Can I help?" asked Grace.
• "It's snowing!" shouted Yuki.

• "Where is my book?" asked Arjun.
• Dadi said that it was time for tea.
• "I don't know," said Farhan.
• "Come here," said Mum.
• "We're here!" called Ella.
• "Is it Kofi's turn?" asked Amara.

Said and the comma

When the speech comes first, it ends with a comma, a question mark or an exclamation mark - and that mark goes inside the closing speech mark.

Notice the small s in said. The sentence has not ended, so said does not need a capital letter.

This is the third step of the mark check - place the mark - which gets its full name, the Mark Test, in Section 8.

Here is the big question to ask: has the whole sentence ended yet?

When said comes first, there is a comma after said, just before the opening speech mark. It is a little pause before the person starts talking: Aditi said, "The tea is ready."

When the speech is a question or a shout, never add a comma as well. The question mark or exclamation mark already does the comma's job. "Can I help?," asked Grace has one mark too many.

And the words inside keep their apostrophes. "I'm ready," said Kabir has an apostrophe in I'm and a comma before the closing mark. Each mark does its own job.

Picture a little door at the end of the speech - the closing speech mark. Before the speaker walks out through the door, they leave a small comma on the doorstep inside, to say "I have finished talking, but the story goes on". Outside the door, the words "said Mum" walk on, and the full stop only closes the gate at the very end of the path.

Said is not the only word that can follow the speech. Asked, shouted, called, whispered and replied all work the same way: "Is it lunch yet?" asked Mei. "Over here," called Tom. The speaker's name can also come before the telling word: "Come here," Mum said. Whichever words follow, the comma or other end mark still sits inside the closing speech mark, and the full stop waits for the end.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. The same words can end in two different ways, depending on where said is. "The tea is ready," said Aditi. Aditi said, "The tea is ready." In the first, the speech comes first. After the speech, the sentence still has more to say - "said Aditi". So the speech ends with a comma, and the full stop goes after Aditi. In the second, said comes first. After the speech, there is nothing more. The speech and the whole sentence end at the same moment, so the full stop goes inside the closing mark. And there is a comma after said, before the speech begins. Here is a test you can use. Put your finger on the closing speech mark and look to the right. Are there more words? Then the speech ends with a comma (or a question or exclamation mark). Nothing more? Then it ends with a full stop (or a question or exclamation mark) - and that is the end of the sentence too.

Did you know that the comma before said is one of the few places where books from Britain and books from America agree? The two countries have different habits about where some commas and full stops go when words are quoted from a book or a sign. You will meet that in the Craft band, and both habits are correct. But in a story, when speech is followed by said, nearly every book in both places puts the comma inside the closing mark, with the speech: "Come here," said Mum. (a book with double marks) 'Come here,' said Mum. (a British book with single marks) The marks change shape, but the comma stays snug inside.

This chapter uses double speech marks. British books often use single ones: 'Come here,' said Mum. Both are correct, and the comma sits inside either way. When said comes first, most books use a comma after said. Some writers use a colon instead: Mum said: "Come here." That is also correct - just keep to one habit. Where commas and full stops go when you quote a book, not a speaker, is a bigger question with two correct styles. You will meet it in Craft.

1. Find the exact words and put speech marks round them.
2. Look to the right of the closing mark. Are there more words, like said Mum?
3. If yes, end the speech with a comma inside the closing mark.
4. If the speech is a question, use a question mark instead of the comma; if it is a shout, use an exclamation mark.
5. Never use a comma and a question mark together.
6. Keep said with a small s.
7. Put the full stop at the very end of the whole sentence.
8. If said comes first, put a comma after said and the full stop inside the closing mark.
9. Read the sentence aloud and pause at the comma to check it sounds right.

• "Sit down, please," said Nani.
• "The tea is ready," said Aditi.
• "Can I come too?" asked Kabir.
• "Come here," said Mum.
• Oliver said, "Let's go."
• "Look at the rain!" shouted Chen.

• "I've finished my homework," said Ishaan.
• Dadi said, "Close the door."
• "Where are my glasses?" asked Dada.
• "That's my seat," said Jack.
• Harry asked, "Is the shop open?"
• "We won!" cheered Sofia.

The Mark Test

The Mark Test asks three questions, in order.

Every section in this chapter comes back to this test. From now on, when you are not sure about a mark, ask: owner, missing letters, or exact words?

Some sentences need more than one kind of mark. Run the test on every word that might need one.

Notice that apostrophes can sit inside speech marks. The apostrophe does its job for one word; the speech marks do their job for the whole speech. The two marks never get in each other's way.

And notice the words the test leaves alone. Twins, kites and glasses end in s, but none of them owns anything or has letters missing. They are just more than one, so they get no mark.

Picture three doors in a row. The first door is labelled "owner or missing letters" - walk through it and you get an apostrophe. The second is labelled "exact words" - walk through it and you get a pair of speech marks. The third door is where you decide exactly where the mark goes. A plain plural knocks on the first door, has no reason to go in, and walks on without a mark.

The Mark Test's first two questions are about two different marks. Question one is about the apostrophe, which has two jobs: owners and missing letters. Question two is about speech marks, which have one job here: exact words. Later in the chapter, question two grows - quotation marks will also hold words quoted from a book, and the titles of poems and stories. But the question stays the same: are these words being shown exactly as someone wrote or said them?

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Some words sound the same but pass the test in different ways. The cat's asleep. The cat's bowl is empty. In the first, cat's means cat is - the i of is is missing. That is question one, missing letters. In the second, cat's means the bowl belongs to the cat. That is question one too - but the owner half. Both get an apostrophe, in the same place. But they get it for different reasons. Here is a test you can use. Try saying the word in full. If "the cat is asleep" makes sense, the apostrophe is for missing letters. If "the cat is bowl" makes no sense, but "the bowl of the cat" does, the apostrophe is for an owner. Knowing the reason matters. It is how you will tell its from it's, and later your from you're, every single time.

Did you know that one sentence can use all three jobs at once? "Don't eat Nani's laddoos!" shouted Aarav. Don't has an apostrophe for missing letters - do not. Nani's has an apostrophe for an owner - the laddoos belong to Nani. Laddoos has no apostrophe at all - it is just more than one. And the speech marks go round Aarav's exact words. Four words, four answers, one test. Once you can do this sentence, you can do almost any sentence in the Discover band.

The Mark Test works for the apostrophes and speech marks in this band. Later bands add a few more cases - many owners (the girls' room), names that end in s, and words quoted from a book - but they all still answer the same three questions. Names of shops and places sometimes have their own spelling, with or without an apostrophe. A name is spelt the way its owner chose, so we do not correct it.

1. Look at every word that might need a mark - especially words ending in s and short words like dont.
2. Ask question one: is something owned, or are letters missing?
3. If it is just more than one, give it no apostrophe.
4. Ask question two: are these someone's exact words?
5. If yes, put speech marks round exactly those words.
6. Ask question three: where does the mark go? 's for one owner; the apostrophe where the letters were.
7. In speech, put the comma inside the closing mark before said.
8. Say words in full to check: it is, do not, the bag of Riya.
9. Be ready to say why each mark is there.

• Riya's bag is red.
• I can't find Dadi's shawl.
• "I'm ready," said Kabir.
• The twins have three kites.
• Tom's cat isn't hungry.
• "Look, Mateo's kite is flying!" shouted Lucia.

• Aarav's lunch box has two samosas.
• "Don't touch that," said Nani.
• We've got three mangoes.
• Ben's socks don't match.
• The dog's asleep.
• "Where's Kofi's hat?" asked Amara.

Who is speaking?

When two people talk, each person gets their own line. Every time the speaker changes, the writer starts a new line.

Notice the last two lines have no "said" and no name. The new lines do the job for you: the talk takes turns, so you can count back.

The Mark Test told you to put speech marks round someone's exact words. This section adds one more step: give each speaker's exact words their own line.

What goes on a speaker's line? Everything that belongs to that speaker's turn.

A speaker can say two things in a row, with their name in the middle. That is still one turn, so it stays on one line.

When the speaker changes, the whole of the new turn moves down - the spoken words and the "said Leo" words together. The name travels with its own speech.

And a line with no name at all? Count the turns from the last line that has a name. If Mum spoke on that line, the next line is the other person, and the one after that is Mum again.

Picture two friends on a see-saw. When one goes up, the other goes down - they take turns, up and down, up and down. Each new line of talk is the see-saw tipping to the other side. If the same friend stays up, the see-saw has not moved, and neither does the line.

In a story, a new speaker's line is really a new paragraph. In many printed books, each new paragraph starts a little way in from the edge, like a small step. That step - called an indent - is another sign that someone new is talking. Some books use a gap between lines instead. Either way, the new speaker gets a fresh start.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes a writer leaves the names out for many lines in a row. "Are you ready?" asked Mum. "Nearly," said Arjun. "Where are your shoes?" "Under my bed." "Go and get them, please." "I'm going!" Who says "Go and get them, please"? Start at the last line with a name. That is Arjun, on line 2. Now count on: line 3 is Mum, line 4 is Arjun, line 5 is Mum. So Mum says "Go and get them, please." This only works because each new speaker got a new line. If the writer had squashed two speakers onto one line, the counting would go wrong. Writers leave out names when only two people are talking, because the turns are easy to follow. When a third person joins in, or the talk has run on a long time, a good writer puts a name back in to help the reader. If you ever lose count, look for the nearest name.

Did you know that plays are written in a completely different way? In a story, speech sits inside speech marks, and a new speaker starts a new line. In a play script, there are no speech marks at all. Instead, each new line starts with the speaker's name, and then the words the actor says: MEERA: Is it raining? AARAV: Only a little. The job is the same - showing who is speaking - but the tools are different. The name at the front does what the speech marks and the new line do in a story. So if you see a play with no speech marks, nobody has made a mistake. It is just a different kind of writing.

A play script sets speech out differently, with the speaker's name at the start of each line and no speech marks. That is a different kind of writing, not a mistake. Sometimes one person talks for so long that their speech runs over more than one paragraph. That has its own pattern, which you will meet much later. In a story, a speaker's line can also hold what that speaker does - "I'm cold," said Tara, rubbing both hands - and that belongs to Tara's turn too. You will meet more of this in Craft.

1. Before you write, decide who says each part.
2. Give each speaker's turn its own line.
3. Every time the speaker changes, start a new line.
4. If the same person keeps talking, stay on their line.
5. Move the name and said down with the speech they belong to.
6. When only two people talk, you may leave the names out once the turns are clear.
7. Put a name back in if a third person joins or the reader could get lost.
8. When reading a line with no name, count back to the last name and follow the turns.
9. Keep the speech marks and the comma before said, just as before.

• "Is it raining?" asked Meera.
• "Only a little," said Aarav.
• "Then let's take the big umbrella."
• "Where are my boots?" asked Oliver.
• "By the door," said Lucy.
• "Sit down, please," said Mr Tanaka. "We start in one minute."

• "Who wants a mango?" asked Nani.
• "I do!" said Ishaan.
• "Wash your hands first."
• "Is the shop open?" asked Harry.
• "Yes, until six," said Chloe.
• "Good morning!" called Amara. "Is Kofi home?"

First mixed review

Every mark in Discover answers one question: what job is this word doing?

And when a second person answers, their words start a new line.

This is the Mark Test from Section 8, used on everything at once: owner, missing letters, or exact words?

When you are not sure, go through the questions in order.

Questions 1 to 3 are about single words. Questions 4 and 5 are about speech.

Many sentences need more than one answer. "It's Asha's turn," said Dev. has letters missing (it's), an owner (Asha's) and exact words - all in one line. Take each word in turn, and give each one its own job.

Picture a sorting station with three doors. Behind the first door is the name tag, for owners. Behind the second is the patch, for missing letters. Behind the third is the speech bubble, for exact words. Every word walks up to the station, and you point it to the right door - or wave it straight past, if it needs no mark at all.

You may have noticed that 's does two different jobs. In "Riya's bag" it shows an owner. In "it's raining" or "Riya's late" it shows letters missing - it is, Riya is. The mark looks the same, so you tell the jobs apart by what comes next. A thing that could be owned, like bag, means an owner. A word like late or raining means letters are missing.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Some sentences need several marks at once. "It's Asha's turn," said Dev. Go word by word. It's - can you say "it is"? "It is Asha's turn." Yes. So it's, with an apostrophe for the missing letter. Asha's - does something belong to Asha? The turn does. One owner, so 's. turn - just one turn, no owner, no missing letters. No mark. And the whole of "It's Asha's turn" is what Dev said, so speech marks go round it, with the comma inside before said Dev. The apostrophes stay inside the speech marks. The speech marks do not change them, and they do not change the speech marks. Each mark just does its own job. If a sentence ever feels crowded, slow down and take one word at a time.

Did you know that one short line can use every job in Discover? "Don't eat Nani's mangoes!" shouted Ishaan. Don't has letters missing - do not. Nani's shows an owner - the mangoes belong to Nani. Mangoes is just more than one, so it has no apostrophe even though it ends in s. And the whole shout sits inside speech marks, with the exclamation mark inside too. Four marks, three jobs, one line. If you can explain every mark in that sentence, you have learned the whole of Discover.

This chapter uses double speech marks, like most Indian school books. Single marks, as in many British books, are also correct - just use one style all the way through. It's can mean "it has" as well as "it is": It's been sunny all day. Both are letters missing. Owners with names that end in s, like James, and groups of owners, like the girls, have their own patterns. They are the very next thing you will learn, in Practice.

1. Look at the job the word is doing, not whether it ends in s.
2. One owner: add 's to the owner - Riya's bag.
3. Letters missing: put the apostrophe where they dropped out - don't.
4. Just more than one: no apostrophe - two mangoes.
5. Its for belonging, it's for it is or it has.
6. Put speech marks round the exact words, and keep said and the name outside.
7. Put the comma before said inside the closing speech mark.
8. Start a new line for each new speaker.
9. In a crowded sentence, take one word at a time.

• Riya's bag is by the door.
• Don't forget your lunch, Arjun.
• Nani bought six mangoes.
• It's raining, so the dog is in its kennel.
• "Come here," said Mum.
• "I can't find my hat," said Mateo.

• Dadi's shawl is soft.
• I'm ready, and so is Kabir.
• Farhan's puppy chased its ball.
• Emma and Jack sang two songs.
• "Wait for me," said Ollie.
• "Where's my book?" asked Chen.

Building accuracy · ages 8–12

Many owners

An apostrophe of ownership is added to the owner word. So first write the owner word correctly for one or for many, then add the mark to the end of it.

• 🔍 Find the owner. Ask: whose is it? The answer is the owner word.
• ⚖️ Count the owners. One or many? Write the word for that number.
• ✏️ Add to the end. Ends in s: just '. No s: add 's.

This is step three of the Mark Test: once you know something is owned, you place the mark to show how many owners there are.

Why does the plural in s take only an apostrophe? Try saying 'the girls's room' out loud. It sounds like 'girlses', which nobody says. So writing keeps the plural s and adds only the mark: the girls' room. You hear no extra sound, and you write no extra s.

Notice the last row. 'The sheep's field' could be one sheep or many, because the plural looks the same as the singular. The apostrophe cannot tell you; the rest of the sentence has to.

And notice the plurals in es and ies. First make the plural - boxes, babies - and only then add the apostrophe. 'The baby's cot' is one baby; 'the babies' cots' are for several.

Picture the owner word as a name badge. First you write the badge correctly: GIRL for one, GIRLS for a group, CHILDREN for a group of children. Then you pin the apostrophe to the very end of the badge. If the badge already ends in S, the apostrophe needs no extra s. If it does not, the apostrophe brings its own s with it. You never cut the badge open to pin the mark in the middle.

The same move works for any owner phrase, however long. 'The Class 6 students' projects' belong to many students, so the mark goes after students. 'The Class 6 student's project' belongs to one. If the owner is a group word that is singular - team, class, family, crowd - it takes 's like any single owner: the team's coach, the class's timetable, the family's car. Count the word, not the people in it.

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: plurals that look like singulars. 'The sheep's wool was thick.' Is that one sheep or a flock? Sheep, deer and fish have plurals that look exactly like the singular. So the owner form is sheep's for one and for many, and the apostrophe cannot count for you. Now a second case: people. 'The people's park.' People is already a plural, like children, so it takes 's. 'The peoples' songs.' Peoples, with an s, means several different nations or groups - the peoples of Asia. It is a plural of a plural, and it ends in s, so it takes only the apostrophe. Both are correct, and they mean different things. 'The people's songs' are the songs of one population; 'the peoples' songs' are the songs of several groups. So the test is not 'Where does the s go?' but 'What is the owner word, and does it end in s?' Answer that, and even these cases fall into place.

Sometimes the apostrophe is the only clue to how many people are involved. 'My brother's friends are coming to dinner.' 'My brothers' friends are coming to dinner.' Read aloud, these sound the same. On paper, the first means one brother; the second means two or more. A guest reading the invitation could lay the table for the wrong number of families. The same trick works on signs. 'Visitor's car park' suggests a single visitor with a very large car park. 'Visitors' car park' is the one most places mean. Next time you pass a sign, count the owners it claims - you may find one that is short of a few.

This section is about possessive apostrophes for many owners. Names ending in s, like James or Vikas, are the next section's job, because style guides differ there. Shared and separate owners - 'Ravi and Asha's house' - come in section 13. Some places keep their own spellings in proper names: a shop, a street or a building may be written without an apostrophe, or with one where you would not expect it. Proper names are spelled the way their owners spell them, so copy them exactly and do not correct them.

1. Ask 'Whose is it?' to find the owner word.
2. Decide whether there is one owner or many.
3. Write the owner word correctly for that number first - babies, boxes, children.
4. If the owner word ends in s, add only an apostrophe: girls'.
5. If it does not end in s, add 's: girl's, children's, women's.
6. Never write childrens', womens' or mens' - those words do not exist.
7. Treat a group word like team or class as one owner: the team's coach.
8. With sheep, deer and fish, let the rest of the sentence show the number.
9. If nothing is owned, a plural takes no apostrophe at all.
10. Copy proper names exactly, whatever their apostrophes.

• The girls' room is at the end of the corridor.
• Nani sewed new covers for the children's pillows.
• The teachers' meeting starts after the last bell, and Ms Rao's class waits.
• The women's team won the county final.
• Oliver fed the rabbits, and the rabbits' hutch was clean by noon.
• In Nairobi, the babies' clinic opens at eight.

• Kabir's cousins borrowed the neighbours' ladder.
• The buses' horns echoed round the depot in Pune.
• Dadi keeps the men's umbrellas and the ladies' shawls in one cupboard.
• The team's captain thanked the fans for coming.
• Harry watched the whole flock, and every one of the sheep's fleeces was thick.
• In Lima, the cities' mayors met to share ideas.

Names ending in s

A single name that ends in s can show ownership in two standard ways. Style guides choose differently, and both choices are correct English.

• 🔍 Write the whole name. Every letter of it, s included, comes before the mark.
• ⚖️ Pick a form. 's or just ' - both are standard.
• 🔁 Keep it. Use the same form every time in one piece.

This is step three of the Mark Test: you know there is one owner, and a name ending in s is the one place where the mark has two standard shapes.

Why do careful writers disagree? Because each form has a real reason behind it.

Say the phrases aloud. Most people say 'Vikas-iz kite', with an extra syllable, and that is one reason many guides write Vikas's. But some speakers say 'Vikas kite' with no extra sound, and a writer who hears it that way may prefer Vikas'.

So the choice is not about right and wrong. It is about which guide you follow and what you hear. What every guide agrees on is this: the whole name comes first, and one form is kept through a piece.

If your teacher, school, publisher or exam names a style, follow it. If not, choose one and use it every time - for Vikas, for Charles and for every other name ending in s in the piece.

Picture a name written on a door plate: VIKAS. The name plate is screwed on and cannot be cut or shortened. To show that something is Vikas's, you hang a small tag on the door handle, after the plate. Some houses hang a tag that says 's; some hang a tag with only the apostrophe. Both tags work. But nobody unscrews the plate to squeeze the tag into the middle of the name.

The same choice applies to other single owners that end in s, not only names: 'the bus's engine' or 'the class's timetable'. Here most guides add 's for ordinary words, and the shorter form is mainly seen with names. So 'the bus's engine' is the safe choice. With names, though, both forms stay standard: 'Paras's school' or 'Paras' school', as long as you keep one.

Here is the case that makes this interesting: a family name ending in s, used for the whole family. The Das family lives next door. There are four of them, so they are 'the Dases', just as the Jones family are 'the Joneses'. The plural of a name ending in s adds es. Now the whole family owns a car. The owner word is the plural, Dases, and it ends in s, so it takes only the apostrophe: 'the Dases' car'. Compare three phrases. 'Mr Das's car' - one owner, Mr Das, with 's (Chicago and many British styles). 'Mr Das' car' - one owner, with just the apostrophe (AP style). 'The Dases' car' - many owners, the whole family. The first two are the same meaning in two styles. The third is a different meaning. 'The Das' car' is the trap: it is not clear whether it means one person called Das, with the AP form, or a family written without its plural. So the test is not 'Is there an s?' but 'Is the owner one person or the whole family?' Make the owner word first - Das or Dases - then add the mark.

Some very old names are often written with the shorter form even by writers who otherwise use 's. You may meet 'Moses' laws' or 'Socrates' ideas' in books that write 'James's bike' on the same page. Some style guides make this exception for certain ancient and classical names, especially long ones that already end in an s sound. The point is not that you need to learn the list. It is that even the guides that prefer 's leave room for choice. The one thing no guide allows is cutting the name: 'Socrate's ideas' changes a famous philosopher into someone nobody has heard of.

This section is about single names ending in s. Plural owners in s - the girls' room - were section 11's job, and the plural of a family name - the Dases - is only met here in the hard case. Shared and separate owners come next, in section 13. Proper names of shops, places and buildings keep their own spellings, with or without an apostrophe. Copy them exactly. When a teacher, school or exam board names a style, follow it; otherwise, both James's and James' are standard.

1. Write the whole name first, every letter, s included.
2. Put the apostrophe after the whole name - never inside it.
3. Choose James's or James' - both are standard.
4. Use the same form for every name ending in s in one piece.
5. Follow Chicago (James's) or AP (James') when a style is named.
6. If a school or exam names a style, follow that one.
7. For a whole family, make the plural first: the Dases, the Joneses.
8. Then add only the apostrophe: the Dases' car.
9. Do not add an apostrophe when the name owns nothing.
10. Do not mark the other standard form wrong in someone else's writing.

• Vikas's kite got stuck in the neem tree.
• Paras' school is next to the river.
• The Dases' car is parked outside, next to Mr Das's scooter.
• Charles's garden is full of roses.
• Chris' guitar and Thomas' drums filled the hall.
• Carlos's grandmother grows maize in Oaxaca.

• Anas's mother and Riya's aunt run a bakery together.
• Kailas' paintings hang in the school corridor.
• Vikas is coming to lunch on Sunday.
• The bus's engine broke down near Thomas's house.
• The Joneses' dog barked at the postman.
• In Accra, Kwadwo visited Agnes' shop every Saturday.

Joint or separate owners

When two or more people own something, the apostrophe shows how they own it.

• 🔍 Ask first. Do they share it, or does each have their own?
• 🤝 Shared? The names work as one owner: the mark goes on the last.
• ✌️ One each? Every name is an owner: every name gets the mark.

This is step three of the Mark Test: you know something is owned, and now the position of each apostrophe shows whether one thing is shared or each owner has one.

Why does the shared pattern put the mark only on the last name? Because the whole group of names acts as a single owner. 'Ravi and Asha' is one owner of one house, so the mark goes at the end of that owner - after Asha - just as it goes at the end of any owner word.

Notice the last two rows. The thing owned - project or projects - is a helpful clue, but it does not decide on its own. 'Meera and Kabir's projects' can be several projects they did together. 'Meera's and Kabir's project', with one project and two marks, sends mixed signals, so writers usually reword it.

The names can be people, shops, companies or towns. 'Delhi and Mumbai's trains' shares; 'Delhi's and Mumbai's trains' separates. The same test works every time.

Picture two children holding one kite string together. There is one kite, so one tag hangs at the end of the pair: Ravi and Asha's kite. Now picture two children, each flying a kite of their own. Two kites, so each child gets a tag: Ravi's and Asha's kites. The tags are the apostrophes - one at the end of a team, or one on every flyer.

The same pattern works with longer owners and with titles. 'Mr and Mrs Rao's shop' is one shop the couple share. 'The doctor's and the nurse's notes' are two sets of notes. With three or more owners sharing one thing, only the last takes the mark: 'Aarav, Diya and Kabir's play'. With three owners each having their own, every one takes it: 'Aarav's, Diya's and Kabir's scripts'.

Here is the case that makes this tricky: a pronoun in the group. Say you and Asha share a project. Many learners write 'me and Asha's project' or 'Asha and I's project'. Neither is standard, because 'me' and 'I' are not owner forms. The owner form of I is 'my', and it has no apostrophe. For separate things it is simple: 'Asha's and my projects' - each owner in its own owner form. For a shared thing, grammar gives 'Asha's and my project', but many readers find that stiff, and it can look like two projects. Careful writers usually reword: 'The project that Asha and I made.' 'Our project' - if the reader already knows who 'our' means. Notice that 'our', 'my', 'your' and 'their' never take an apostrophe. They are already owner words, like 'his' and 'its'. So the test is not 'Where do the apostrophes go?' alone. It is 'Shared or one each?', then 'Is every owner in its owner form?' And when the sentence stays awkward, reword.

Sometimes one apostrophe decides who pays. 'Arjun and Neha's bill came to four hundred rupees.' 'Arjun's and Neha's bills came to four hundred rupees.' In the first, there is one bill for the pair. They ate together, and the four hundred is shared between them. In the second, there are two bills, one each - and now a careful reader asks whether four hundred is the total of both or the amount on each. The words are nearly the same, and the facts are not. Receipts, school reports and agreements are read with this in mind, and a careful reader notices that the number of apostrophes is part of the meaning. When money is involved, writers often add a word to remove all doubt: 'their shared bill' or 'each bill'.

This section is about two or more named owners. Many owners written as one plural word - the girls' room - were section 11's job, and names ending in s were section 12's. Owner pronouns such as my, your, our and their take no apostrophe; the sound-alike pairs - your and you're, their and they're - come in the next section. Some shop and company names include two names with one apostrophe, or none. They are proper names: copy them exactly as the owners write them.

1. Ask first: do they share one thing, or does each have their own?
2. Shared: put the apostrophe on the last name only - Ravi and Asha's house.
3. Separate: put an apostrophe on every name - Ravi's and Asha's bikes.
4. With three or more owners, the same test works.
5. Do not decide from the noun alone; plural things can still be shared.
6. Follow section 12 for any name ending in s, and keep one form.
7. Use my, your, our and their - never an apostrophe - for pronoun owners.
8. Avoid 'me and Asha's' and 'Asha and I's'.
9. If a shared phrase with a pronoun sounds stiff, reword it.
10. Copy shop and company names exactly as written.

• Ravi and Asha's house is by the lake.
• Ravi's and Asha's bikes are in the shed.
• Nani, Dadi and Mum's recipe book is falling apart.
• Emily's and Jack's coats were soaked, one each.
• Mr and Mrs Hall's garden won a prize.
• In Seoul, Min-jun and Ji-woo's shop sells kites they make together.

• Aarav, Diya and Kabir's play was the best in the festival.
• The doctor's and the nurse's notes were both on the desk.
• Asha's and my projects were marked on Monday.
• Harry and Oliver's tent blew over in the night.
• Lucy's, Grace's and Chloe's dogs met in the park.
• In Cairo, Omar and Layla's bakery opens at dawn.

Sound-alike pairs

Each pair sounds the same. The one with an apostrophe is a short form with letters missing. The one without is an owner word (or, for there, a place word).

• 🗣️ Say it in full. Put it is, you are, they are or who is in the gap.
• ✅ It fits? Write the short form with the apostrophe.
• ❌ Nonsense? Write the word with no apostrophe.

This is step one of the Mark Test: an apostrophe shows an owner or missing letters, and in these pairs it only ever shows missing letters, because the owner words need none.

Why does its have no apostrophe when the dog's tail does? Because its belongs to a family of owner words that never take one: my, your, his, her, its, our, their, whose. Nobody writes hi's, and her's is never standard. Its is simply the one that looks like it should.

Notice that it's and who's can stand for 'has' as well as 'is'. 'It's been raining' is 'it has been raining'. So try both long forms before you decide.

There is the odd one out. It is not an owner word or a short form: it points to a place ('over there') or starts a sentence ('There is a cat'). If neither 'they are' nor 'belonging to them' fits, the word is usually there.

Picture each short form as a folded paper fan. Unfold it and you see the full words inside: it's opens into 'it is', you're into 'you are'. The apostrophe is the crease where letters were folded away. An owner word like its or your is not a fan at all - it is a single flat card with nothing folded inside. If you try to unfold it and get nonsense, it was never a fan.

The same test works for other pairs you will meet: there's and theirs ('There's a queue' - there is; 'The house is theirs' - belonging to them), and let's and lets ('Let's go' - let us; 'She lets the cat in' - allows). Say the short form in full: if the long form fits, keep the apostrophe; if it is nonsense, the word without one is right.

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: sentences where both long forms seem to fit, or where it's hides 'has'. 'It's got a crack in it.' Say 'it is got a crack' - that sounds wrong. Some learners stop there and write its. But try the other long form: 'It has got a crack in it.' That fits. So it's is right, standing for 'it has'. Now a whose sentence. 'Who's seen the film?' - 'Who has seen the film?' fits, so who's. 'Whose film won?' - 'Who is film won?' and 'Who has film won?' are both nonsense, so whose. And a their sentence with three in a row. 'They're taking their dog there.' They are taking (they're) - belonging to them (their) - to that place (there). So the test is not 'Does is fit?' alone. It is 'Does any long form fit - is, has, are?' Only when every long form turns into nonsense is it the owner word.

Its did once have an apostrophe. In older English printing, you can find it's used for 'belonging to it', in the same way that the dog's means belonging to the dog. Over time, writers settled on its, with no apostrophe, to match his and her, and it's was kept for 'it is'. So a learner who writes 'the dog wagged it's tail' is not being random. They are following a pattern - owners take apostrophes - that English itself once followed, and then changed. Knowing that makes the rule easier to remember: its joined the family of his, her and their, and families do not share apostrophes.

This section is about four sound-alike groups: its and it's, your and you're, their, they're and there, and whose and who's. Contractions in general - don't, can't, I'm - were in Discover, and when to use contractions at all in formal writing is a Craft question (section 27). The say-it-in-full test tells you which spelling is right. It does not mean you must write the long form: 'it's' and 'you're' are standard in speech and everyday writing. Some formal essays prefer the long forms - a choice of style, not a correction.

1. Say the word in full: it is, it has, you are, they are, who is, who has.
2. If a long form fits, write the short form with the apostrophe.
3. If every long form is nonsense, write the owner word with no apostrophe.
4. Remember the family: my, your, his, her, its, our, their, whose - no apostrophes.
5. Never write its', your's or their's.
6. For it's and who's, try 'has' as well as 'is'.
7. Use there for a place or to start 'There is' or 'There are'.
8. Do not trust a spell-checker with these pairs.
9. Read your message once more, looking only for these words.
10. Choose long forms in formal writing if your teacher asks for them.

• It's too hot, so the dog is lying in its kennel.
• You're welcome to borrow your cousin's cricket bat.
• They're sure their train leaves from there.
• Who's taken the scissors, and whose are these?
• It's been raining since the team lost its captain.
• In Manila, they're opening their new market today.

• Whose tiffin box is this, and who's going to wash it?
• There is a crack in the pot, and its lid is missing.
• Dadi says you're the only one who knows your way home.
• It's got a broken wheel, so the trolley lost its load.
• The twins left their coats over there because they're warm.
• In Lagos, whose stall sells the best puff-puff?

Time and amount

A phrase of time or amount can work like an owner. Put 'of' in the middle to check: a holiday of a week, notice of two days, the worth of a rupee.

• 🔍 Look for a noun after it. holiday, notice, walk, worth, rent, experience.
• ⚖️ Check with 'of'. If 'a holiday of a week' fits, it is owner-like.
• ✏️ Place the mark. One: 's. Plural in s: just '.

This is step one of the Mark Test in a new place: the time or amount works like an owner, so it takes the owner's apostrophe.

Why do time phrases take an apostrophe at all? Because English has long used the owner form to mean 'of' in a wide sense - not only 'belonging to' but also 'lasting' or 'costing'. 'A day's work' is work lasting a day, just as 'the girl's work' is work done by the girl.

Notice the pair 'three hours' drive' and 'a three-hour drive'. They mean the same thing. The first uses the owner form; the second makes 'three-hour' a describing word with a hyphen, and then there is no apostrophe and no plural s. Both are standard - but do not mix them: 'a three-hours' drive' is neither.

Picture a price tag or a timer hanging from the thing it measures. The holiday has a tag that says ONE WEEK; the notice has a tag that says TWO DAYS. The apostrophe is the little string that ties the tag to the thing: a week's holiday, two days' notice. A phrase like 'two weeks ago' has no thing to hang from - it just floats in the sentence - so it needs no string.

The same pattern works with 'today', 'tomorrow' and 'yesterday', which act like one unit: today's news, tomorrow's weather, yesterday's homework. It also works with 'the day', 'the year' and 'the week' naming a particular one: the day's events, the year's best film. Each is one unit, so each takes 's.

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: the same words, with and without an apostrophe, meaning different things. 'I have two weeks' work to finish.' 'I have two weeks to finish my work.' In the first, 'two weeks' work' is an amount of work - work that will take two weeks. There is a noun after the phrase, and 'work of two weeks' fits, so the apostrophe goes after the s. In the second, 'two weeks' is simply how long you have. The next word is 'to', not a noun, and 'of' does not fit. No apostrophe. Now try this one. 'The project took three months' planning.' 'The project was planned three months ahead.' Planning is a noun, and 'planning of three months' fits: apostrophe. Ahead is not a noun, and nothing is 'of' three months: none. So the test is not 'Is there a time word?' but 'Is there a noun that the time or amount measures?' Check with 'of' every time.

The rupee phrase can change the meaning of a shopping trip. 'Buy a rupee's worth of sweets.' 'Buy ten rupees' worth of sweets.' Both are standard, and they are the same pattern: the worth of one rupee, the worth of ten rupees. Notice that the apostrophe moves with the number, not with the sweets. The same trick hides in job adverts. 'Five years' experience' is experience of five years. Leave the mark out and the phrase is still understood - but many employers read applications closely, and a careful apostrophe in 'five years' experience' is one of the small signals that you check your work.

This section is about phrases of time and amount before a noun. Describing forms with a hyphen - a two-day trip, a five-rupee coin - use no apostrophe and are part of hyphens (chapter 19). Ages - 'three years old' - never take an apostrophe. In everyday writing, many people leave the apostrophe out of phrases like 'two weeks notice', and readers understand them. Style guides and careful editors keep the mark, so this section teaches the form they use.

1. Look for a noun after the time or amount: holiday, notice, walk, worth, work.
2. Check with 'of': a holiday of a week, notice of two days.
3. If 'of' fits, the phrase takes an apostrophe.
4. One unit takes 's: a day's walk, an hour's drive.
5. A plural in s takes only the apostrophe: three days' walk.
6. Today, tomorrow and yesterday take 's: today's news.
7. No noun after it - two weeks ago - no apostrophe.
8. Ages take no apostrophe: three years old.
9. Use either three hours' drive or a three-hour drive, not a mix.
10. Keep the mark in formal writing even if you see it dropped elsewhere.

• We are going to Shimla for a week's holiday.
• The school needs two days' notice before a trip.
• Nani bought ten rupees' worth of peanuts, and a rupee's worth of salt.
• The farm is an hour's walk from the station.
• Oliver started the job two weeks ago.
• In Nairobi, the job asks for three years' experience.

• Today's match was cancelled because of the rain.
• Kabir has five years' experience as a driver.
• The bus ride to Ooty is a six-hour journey.
• In a year's time, the new bridge will open.
• My cousin is nine years old and loves football.
• In Lima, the market sells fifty soles' worth of fruit to each family.

Punctuating speech

Speech follows the same pattern wherever the reporting words go.

• 🔍 Find the exact words. Only what was said goes inside the marks.
• 🔠 Start with a capital. The first word of the speech is capitalised.
• 📌 Punctuation inside. The speech's comma or full stop sits before the closing mark.

This is step two and step three of the Mark Test: these are someone's exact words, so the marks go round exactly those words, and the speech's own punctuation goes inside.

Why does a comma replace the full stop when 'said Mum' follows? Because the speech and the reporting words make one sentence together. A full stop would end that sentence halfway. The comma says: the speech is finished, but the sentence is not.

Notice that 'said Mum' and 'Mum said' are both standard. Stories use both. What matters is the punctuation around them.

And notice the split speech row. To decide between a small letter and a capital after the reporting words, ask: does the speech carry on the same sentence, or start a new one? 'If you hurry ... you'll catch it' is one sentence, so small letter. 'I'm late. Wait for me.' is two sentences, so a full stop after 'said Nani' and a capital W.

Picture the quotation marks as the two hands of a speaker, holding their words up for the reader. Everything the speaker says - including the little comma or full stop at the end of what they said - sits between the hands. The narrator's words, like 'said Mum', stand outside, beside the speaker. When the speaker pauses mid-sentence, the hands let go, the narrator steps in, and then the hands pick up the rest of the same sentence.

A new speaker usually starts a new paragraph, which you met in Discover. The same punctuation pattern holds in every paragraph. When the reporting words come before speech that is a full sentence, a comma after 'said' is the usual choice: Mum said, "Come inside." Some writers use a colon before a long or formal quotation, which Craft looks at when you quote in essays.

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: split speech, and whether the second part starts a new sentence. "When the bell rings," said the teacher, "line up at the door." Say it without 'said the teacher': 'When the bell rings, line up at the door.' That is one sentence. So after 'said the teacher' comes a comma, and 'line' has a small letter. "The bell has rung," said the teacher. "Line up at the door." Say this one without the reporting words: 'The bell has rung. Line up at the door.' That is two sentences. So after 'said the teacher' comes a full stop, and 'Line' has a capital. The words 'said the teacher' are the same in both. What changes is whether the speaker has finished one sentence. That is why the test is to take the reporting words out and listen: one sentence, comma and small letter; two sentences, full stop and capital. And notice what never changes: the first part always ends with a comma inside its closing mark, because the reporting words always follow straight after.

Quotation marks for speech are younger than you might think. Early printed books often showed speech with no quotation marks at all. Readers worked out who was talking from words like 'said' and 'quoth'. Printers gradually adopted marks for quoted words, and the pattern you are learning - a capital to start, the speech's own comma inside, the reporting words outside - became the standard for stories over the following centuries. Some modern writers still leave the marks out on purpose, for a particular effect, and Master looks at why. But for almost everything you write, the pattern is what lets a reader hear two voices on one page without getting lost.

This section covers speech with commas and full stops. Question marks and exclamation marks inside speech come in the next section. Reported speech - 'Mum said that we should come inside' - takes no quotation marks; that is section 18. Single and double marks are section 19's job; this section uses double marks. Placing commas and full stops after quoted words that are not speech - titles, terms, quotations in essays - is where American and British styles differ. That is a Craft topic (section 29). For story dialogue, the comma and full stop go inside.

1. Put only the exact words spoken inside the quotation marks.
2. Start the speech with a capital letter.
3. If the reporting words follow, end the speech with a comma inside the closing mark.
4. If the speech ends the sentence, put the full stop inside the closing mark.
5. If the reporting words come first, put a comma after them: Mum said, "Come inside."
6. Write said Mum or Mum said - both are standard.
7. For split speech, take out the reporting words and listen.
8. One sentence: comma after the reporting words, small letter to carry on.
9. Two sentences: full stop after the reporting words, capital to start again.
10. Start a new paragraph for each new speaker.

• "Come inside," said Mum.
• Dadi said, "The mangoes are ripe."
• "If you hurry," said Nani, "you'll catch it."
• "I'm late," Grandad said. "Wait for me."
• "The match starts at two," the coach said.
• "The rains are coming," said the farmer in Accra.

• "When the bell rings," said the teacher, "line up at the door."
• "The bell has rung," said the teacher. "Line up at the door."
• Meera's brother said, "The kite is stuck in the tree."
• "Don't forget the tickets," said Emily.
• "We're nearly there," Jack said. "Can you see the sea?"
• "The ferry leaves at six," said the captain in Manila.

Questions and exclamations in speech

A question mark or exclamation mark that belongs to the speech goes inside the closing mark, and it replaces the comma.

• ❓ Whose question? If the speaker asked it, the mark goes inside.
• 🚫 No extra comma. The ? or ! already does the comma's job.
• 🔡 Small letter after. asked Ravi, shouted Dadi - the sentence carries on.

This is step three of the Mark Test: the speech's own comma, question mark or exclamation mark goes inside the closing quote, and the reporting words sit outside.

Why does 'asked' keep a small letter after a question mark? Because the question mark here ends the speech, not the sentence. The whole sentence is "Are you coming?" asked Ravi. and it ends at the full stop after Ravi.

And split speech works as before. "Wait!" called Nani. "You forgot your bag." The exclamation ends the first part, a full stop follows 'called Nani', and the new sentence of speech starts with a capital.

Only when the question belongs to the whole sentence does the mark move outside: Did the teacher really say "No homework"? The teacher did not ask anything; the writer is asking. Both American and British writing treat this case the same way.

Picture the quotation marks as a box that holds the speaker's voice, including the lift of a question or the punch of a shout. The ? or ! is part of the voice, so it rides inside the box. It also acts as the box's lid, so no comma is needed to close it. Outside the box, the narrator carries on quietly in small letters - asked Ravi, shouted Dadi - until the sentence ends with the narrator's own full stop.

The reporting verb often matches the mark: asked or wondered with a question, shouted, cried or called with an exclamation. That is a style choice, not a rule - 'said' works too - but it helps the reader. What does not change is the punctuation: the ? or ! sits inside, no comma is added, and the reporting words keep a small letter. When the reporting words come first, a comma follows them and the question mark or exclamation mark ends the whole sentence: Ravi asked, "Are you coming?"

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: a question and a quotation that are not the same thing. 'Did Nani say "Come home by six"?' Nani gave an instruction, with no question in it. The writer is asking whether she said it. So the question mark belongs to the whole sentence, and it goes outside the closing mark. 'Nani asked, "Will you be home by six?"' Here Nani asked the question. It belongs to her words, so it goes inside, and it ends the whole sentence too - no extra full stop. Now the rare case where both are questions. 'Did Nani really ask "Are you hungry?"' The speech is a question and the whole sentence is a question. Writers usually keep just one question mark, inside, rather than stacking two. So the test is not 'Is there a question?' but 'Whose question is it - the speaker's, the writer's, or both?' Answer that, and you know where the mark goes.

An exclamation mark can change who seems to be shouting. "We won!" said Kabir. "We won," said Kabir! The first puts the excitement in Kabir's voice. The second, which is not standard, seems to make the narrator shout about the fact that Kabir spoke - a strange thing to be excited about. Compare: I can't believe the sign said "Closed"! Here the narrator really is exclaiming, and the sign did not shout anything, so the exclamation mark sits outside. The position of one small mark tells the reader whose feeling it is.

This section covers question marks and exclamation marks with speech. Reported questions - 'Ravi asked whether we were coming' - take no quotation marks and no question mark; that is the next section. Quotes within quotes are section 19. Using many exclamation marks in a row, or mixing ?! at the end of speech, is a style choice that most formal writing avoids. It is not tested here.

1. Ask whose question or exclamation it is.
2. If it belongs to the speaker, put the ? or ! inside the closing mark.
3. Do not add a comma after it - one mark ends the speech.
4. Keep a small letter on the reporting words that follow: asked Ravi.
5. If the reporting words come first, the ? or ! inside ends the whole sentence.
6. Do not add a full stop after a closing mark that already has ? or !.
7. For split speech, decide one sentence or two, as before.
8. If the writer, not the speaker, is asking, put the ? outside.
9. Match the verb to the mark if you like - asked, shouted - but said is always fine.
10. Use one exclamation mark, not several.

• "Are you coming?" asked Ravi.
• "Watch out!" shouted Dadi.
• Meera asked, "Where's the key?"
• "Stop!" cried the guard. "Nobody moves."
• Did the coach say "No training today"?
• "Can we swim here?" asked the visitor in Fiji.

• "Wait!" called Nani. "You forgot your bag."
• "What time is it?" Kabir asked.
• Did Nani really say "Come home by six"?
• "We won!" said Chloe.
• I can't believe the sign said "Closed"!
• The guide in Cusco asked, "Who's ready to climb?"

Direct or reported?

There are two ways to write what someone said. Only one uses quotation marks.

• 🔍 Whose words? The speaker's exact words, or the writer's summary?
• 💬 Exact words? Quotation marks, capital, punctuation inside.
• 📝 Reported? No quotation marks, and a reported question has no question mark.

This is step two of the Mark Test: quotation marks go round someone's exact words - and reported speech is not their exact words, so it takes none.

Why does a reported question lose its question mark? Because the sentence as a whole is no longer a question. 'Ravi asked whether the shop was open' is a statement about Ravi. It tells you that Ravi asked; it does not ask you anything.

Notice the last row. The word that is often left out: 'Nani said she was tired' is still reported speech. So look beyond the signal words. Ask whether I, you and we still match the speaker, and whether the words could have come out of their mouth exactly as written.

Converting between the two forms usually means changing pronouns (I to she) and often tenses (am to was). The pronouns you will see here; the tense changes are taught in chapter 13.

Picture direct speech as a recording: you press play and hear the speaker's own voice, word for word. The quotation marks are the play and stop buttons. Reported speech is a friend telling you what was on the recording, in their own words. There is no recording to play, so there are no buttons. If you put buttons round your friend's summary, the listener expects the speaker's voice - and gets your friend's.

Reported speech can report thoughts and wishes too: 'Kabir wondered whether it would rain', 'Asha hoped that the bus would be on time'. None of these take quotation marks. Direct thoughts are sometimes written in quotation marks and sometimes in italics in stories, a style choice you will meet in Craft; reported thoughts, like reported speech, take neither.

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: a sentence that reports speech but quotes a few exact words. The coach said the team had played "like champions". This is mainly reported speech - the coach's point is summed up in the writer's words. But 'like champions' are the coach's exact words, so those two words can go in quotation marks. Writers do this in news reports and essays to keep the flavour of the original. The rule still holds: only the exact words go inside. What you must never do is put quotation marks round words the speaker did not say: The coach said "the team had played like champions". If the coach actually said 'You played like champions', then 'the team had played' was never spoken, and the marks make a false promise. So the test is not 'Is this reported speech?' alone. It is 'Which words, if any, are exactly what was said?' Those words, and only those, can go in quotation marks. Quoting in essays in more detail is a Craft section.

Newspapers rely on this difference every day. A headline might say: Minister says roads will be ready by June. That is reported speech, and it tells you the gist. The article below may then quote: "We will finish the work by June," the minister said. If a reporter wrote the minister said "the roads will be ready by June" when those were not the exact words, the quotation marks would be putting words into the minister's mouth. That is why careful reporters keep quotation marks for words they can check - a recording, a transcript, a written statement - and report everything else.

This section is about punctuation: quotation marks for exact words, none for reported speech, and no question mark for a reported question. How the verbs and time words change when speech is reported - am to was, today to that day - is taught in chapter 13 and is not tested here. Quoting a few exact words inside reported speech is allowed, as the hard case shows. Doing it well in essays - trimming, fitting quotations into your own sentences - is a Craft topic.

1. Ask whose words are on the page: the speaker's or the writer's.
2. Exact words go in quotation marks, with a capital and punctuation inside.
3. Reported speech takes no quotation marks.
4. Look for that, whether, if or to after the reporting verb - but check, because that can be left out.
5. Check the pronouns: I and you in the speech usually become she, he, they or we when reported.
6. End a reported question with a full stop, not a question mark.
7. Do not mix the forms in one sentence.
8. Quote only the words that were really said, even a short phrase.
9. Use direct speech for voice and drama, reported speech to sum up.
10. Leave the tense changes to chapter 13's rules.

• Nani said, "I'm tired."
• Nani said that she was tired.
• Ravi asked whether the shop was open.
• Mr Hall said, "The library closes at five."
• Mr Hall told us the library closed at five.
• The guide in Nairobi asked if we had seen a giraffe.

• Meera asked if the bus had left.
• Meera asked, "Has the bus left?"
• The coach said the team had played "like champions".
• Grandad asked us to water the tomatoes.
• Emily wondered whether it would snow.
• In Mexico City, the driver said, "We're nearly there."

Single or double?

Two styles, one rule for the quote inside.

• 📖 Pick the style. Follow your school, your teacher or your publisher. If no one names one, choose one.
• 🔄 Switch inside. A quotation inside a quotation takes the other kind of mark.
• 📏 Keep it. Use the same style from the first line to the last.

This is step two of the Mark Test: exact words take quotation marks - and when those exact words contain someone else's exact words, the inner ones take the other kind.

Because both styles are standard, the only way to judge a line is against the style it is meant to follow.

Notice that the third line is wrong in every style. A quotation opens and closes with the same kind of mark.

Notice too that the everyday error is not choosing single or double. It is mixing them: double marks on page one and single marks on page two, or the same kind of mark for a quote and the quote inside it. Readers use the marks to count openings and closings, like brackets in maths.

Picture a set of nesting boxes. The big box holds the speaker's words, and it is one colour - say blue. Inside it sits a smaller box holding the words the speaker is repeating, and it must be a different colour - say red - or you cannot see where the small box ends and the big one carries on. Single-first style uses a red big box and a blue small one; double-first uses blue outside and red inside. Either works. Two boxes of the same colour, one inside the other, blur into one.

What if the quote inside a quote has its own quote inside it? The marks switch back again: double, then single, then double. It is rare, and most writers rewrite the sentence to avoid it. The same switch happens with titles and terms that sit inside speech: in double-first style, "We read 'The Road Not Taken' today," said Tara - the poem's title takes the inner kind. Craft looks at titles and terms in quotation marks more closely.

Here is the hard case, and it only happens in single-first style: an apostrophe and a quotation mark look exactly the same. 'Put it in the girls' room,' said Nani. There are three marks that look like ' in this line. The first opens Nani's speech. The second, after girls, is an apostrophe: the room belongs to the girls. The third, after room and its comma, closes the speech. How do you tell them apart? Use the Mark Test on each one. Is something owned, or are letters missing? Then it is an apostrophe, and it sits inside a word or straight after an owner. Is it round someone's exact words? Then it is a quotation mark, and it sits at the edge of the speech, next to a space or the speech's own punctuation. This is one reason some writers and publishers prefer double marks first: the apostrophe and the quotation mark never look the same. Others prefer single marks because they are lighter on the page. Neither side is wrong. But if you write in single-first style, check every mark near the end of the speech, and make sure each apostrophe is still in its word.

The same quotation can look different in different countries, and it has nothing to do with mistakes. A story printed in New York may use "double marks" for speech. The same story printed for British readers may use 'single marks'. Many Indian textbooks follow the double-first pattern, while some Indian publishers follow British house styles. Each publisher writes its choices down in a house style guide, and its editors follow it page by page. And English is only one language. French often uses « angle marks », and German often uses marks that open low and close high. Master looks at those. The lesson in every language is the same: a reader needs to see clearly where quoted words begin and end.

This section is about which kind of quotation mark to use. It does not key either style as wrong unless a question names the style to follow. Where commas and full stops go when a quotation is not speech - a title, a term, a quotation in an essay - is also a place where American and British styles differ. That is a Craft topic (section 29). In story dialogue, the speech's own comma or full stop goes inside the closing mark in both styles, and this section's lines follow that. Titles in quotation marks and italics are Craft section 25.

1. Treat single and double marks as two standard styles, not right and wrong.
2. Follow the style your school, teacher or publisher names.
3. If no style is named, choose one and keep it.
4. Open and close each quotation with the same kind of mark.
5. Switch to the other kind for a quote inside a quote.
6. Close the inner quotation before you close the outer one.
7. In single-first style, check every mark near the end of the speech: apostrophe or closing mark?
8. Do not 'correct' a book or article just because it uses the other style.
9. Keep the speech pattern the same in both styles: capital, punctuation inside, reporting words outside.
10. When editing, check the whole piece for one style, not just one line.

• "The train is late," said Asha.
• 'The train is late,' said Asha.
• "Dadi always says 'Eat first' before we play," laughed Kabir.
• 'The sign said "Keep off the grass" in big letters,' said Emily.
• "Put it in the boys' room," said Grandad.
• "He shouted 'Stop!' and ran," said Mei.

• "We read 'The Road Not Taken' in class," said Tara.
• 'Put it in the girls' room,' said Nani.
• "The guard said 'No entry' and shut the gate," said Arjun.
• 'Mum wrote "Back soon" on the note,' said Jack.
• 'I can't find my shoes,' said Olivia.
• "The driver called out 'Last stop!' twice," said Kofi.

Explain your evidence

To explain a mark, name its reason. Every mark in this band has one of these reasons, and so does every missing mark.

This is the whole Mark Test in one move: owner, missing letters, or exact words - and when you explain, say which step decided it.

Here is what evidence sounds like, next to what a guess sounds like.

Notice two things. First, every piece of evidence can be checked. You can test 'it is raining'; you cannot test 'it looks right'.

Second, evidence works in both directions. It tells you when to add a mark and when to take one out - and when to leave a choice alone. A good editor fixes Two apple's and leaves Thomas' as it is.

Picture each mark carrying a small label, like a price tag on a shelf. The apostrophe in Riya's carries a tag that reads 'one owner'. The one in don't reads 'letters missing'. The quotation marks round Mum's words read 'exact words'. Your job is to read every tag. A mark with a blank tag has no reason to be there - take it off the shelf. A gap on the shelf with a tag waiting - 'one owner', but no apostrophe - needs its mark put back.

Some sentences have several marks doing different jobs at once, and the evidence names each one. In "Don't touch Dadi's plants," said Riya, the apostrophe in Don't shows letters missing, the one in Dadi's shows one owner, and the quotation marks show exact words. Craft will add further reasons - titles in quotation marks, decades like the 1990s, and names like O'Brien that keep their own spelling - and the same habit of naming a reason carries straight on.

Here is a sentence where two reasons compete, and only the facts decide. 'Ravi and Asha's bikes are in the shed.' Someone might say: 'Ravi needs an apostrophe too, because he owns a bike.' Someone else might say: 'No - Ravi and Asha own the bikes together, so one apostrophe is enough.' Both reasons name a job, so both are evidence. What decides? The facts. If Ravi and Asha share the bikes, the pair owns them together and only the last name takes 's: Ravi and Asha's bikes. If each has their own bike, each is a separate owner and each name takes 's: Ravi's and Asha's bikes. The sentence alone does not tell you which. So the careful answer is not 'wrong' or 'right' - it is 'it depends whether the bikes are shared, and here is how each version reads'. So evidence is not only naming a reason; it is checking that the reason fits the meaning. When a question states the facts - one shared house, one bike each - use them. When it does not, say what each version would mean.

Some of the most famous apostrophes in the world are not about grammar at all. Many shop and place names keep a spelling their owners chose long ago. Some names that look as if they need an apostrophe have none, and some that look as if they do not, have one. Irish surnames such as O'Brien keep an O' that comes from an Irish word meaning 'descendant of'. That is not a failure of the Mark Test. It is a different kind of evidence: a proper name is spelt the way its owner spells it, and a careful writer copies it exactly. Craft looks at names like these. The reason you give is simply: 'that is how the name is written'.

This section reviews the Practice band, sections 11 to 19. It keys no standard choice as wrong: James's and James', single and double marks first, and said Nani and Nani said are all accepted unless a question names a style. Joint and separate owners are keyed only when a question says whether one thing is shared or each person has one. Where commas and full stops sit beside quoted words that are not speech is left to Craft (section 29). Tense changes in reported speech belong to chapter 13 and are not tested here.

1. For every apostrophe, name its reason: one owner, many owners, or letters missing.
2. For every pair of quotation marks, name what they hold: exact words, a title or term, or a quote within a quote.
3. For every word ending in s without a mark, check that no mark is needed: a plain plural, its, his, yours.
4. Test sound-alikes by saying them in full: it is, you are, they are, who is.
5. Leave standard choices alone: James's or James', single or double first.
6. If a style is named, follow it and keep it.
7. For joint or separate owners, check whether one thing is shared or each has one.
8. Give no quotation marks to reported speech.
9. Replace 'it looks right' with a reason someone else can check.
10. Explain every change you make - the marks you remove as well as the ones you add.

• "Don't touch Dadi's plants," said Riya.
• The girls' team and the children's choir met at Ravi's house.
• Arjun said that the buses were late again.
• We'll give James's sister two weeks' notice.
• 'It's the dog's bowl, not its bed,' said Emily.
• "The sign said 'Staff only' in red," whispered Mei.

• Paras' kite is stuck, so we're fetching the girls' ladder.
• Dhruv's and Meena's bikes are new, but they're not locked.
• "Whose turn is it?" asked Nani. "Who's next?"
• In the 1990s, Oliver's parents' shop sold CDs.
• Hannah said the women's team had earned a day's rest.
• "You're late, and your tea's cold," said Aunt Rosa.

Writing with intent · ages 12–16

Dialogue that reads well

Dialogue that reads well does four things.

A tag is joined to the speech: a comma, question mark or exclamation mark inside the closing mark, then the tag. An action beat is not a way of speaking, so it stands as its own sentence, with a full stop.

This is still the Mark Test: the marks go round exactly the words spoken, and the tag or beat stays outside them.

The difference between a tag and a beat is the one that trips most writers, so look closely.

Now the tags themselves. Said and asked carry most dialogue in published fiction. A stronger verb earns its place when it tells the reader something the words cannot: "Get down," whispered Nandini tells us the words were spoken quietly, which they cannot show on their own. But "Give it back!" she shouted adds little - the exclamation mark and the words already shout.

Adverbs work the same way. "I'm hungry," said Ravi hungrily says one thing twice. Many writing guides advise using them sparingly; that is advice about style, not a rule of punctuation.

Think of a play on a stage. Each actor steps into the light to speak, and the audience never needs a narrator shouting 'Now Anjali speaks!' The paragraph break is the actor stepping forward. The tag is a small name card, held low, glanced at and forgotten. An action beat is the actor moving - picking up a cup, turning to the window - so we know who it is without any card at all.

When one speaker talks for more than one paragraph, a convention followed in both American and British fiction applies: open quotation marks at the start of each new paragraph, but do not close them at the end of any paragraph except the last. The missing closing mark tells the reader that the same person is still speaking. It looks odd at first, but you will find it in almost every long novel.

Here is the judgement that takes practice: when to leave the tag out altogether. In a quick exchange between two people, once the reader knows who spoke first, the paragraphs do the rest: "Is this seat free?" the old man asked Zoya. "Yes, please sit." "Thank you. Are you going far?" "Only to Mysuru." No reader is lost. Each new paragraph is the other voice. Adding 'said Zoya' and 'said the old man' to every line would slow the scene down. But the method has a limit. After six or eight untagged lines, readers start counting back on their fingers. And if a third person joins, the alternating pattern breaks. So the skill is to drop tags while the pattern is clear, and to put one back - or an action beat - just before the reader would begin to wonder. A useful test: cover the tags with your hand and read the conversation aloud to someone. Wherever they ask 'Wait, who said that?', you need a tag or a beat there.

Some of the most famous dialogue in English barely uses tags at all. In many plays, there are none: the speaker's name simply stands at the start of each line, and the words carry everything else. Shakespeare's scripts work this way, and so do film scripts today. Novelists borrowed the trick. Many modern novels run whole pages of dialogue with only an occasional said, trusting paragraph breaks and each character's way of speaking to do the work. A character who always says 'Arre, listen' and another who speaks in short, clipped sentences can be told apart with no tags at all. So the strongest tag is often the one that is not there - provided the reader never gets lost.

This section is about style and readability, so few of its choices are right or wrong. Said versus a stronger verb, and whether to use an adverb, are judgements; items here key them only when the stem says what the writer wants. Two things are keyed: an action beat joined with a comma, and two speakers run into one paragraph. Comma placement for quoted words that are not speech is section 29. Quotation marks within dialogue are covered in section 19.

1. Start a new paragraph every time the speaker changes.
2. Use said and asked for most tags; the reader barely sees them.
3. Choose a stronger verb only when the words cannot show how they were spoken.
4. Keep adverbs for the rare line where the tone would otherwise be missed.
5. Write an action beat as its own sentence, with a full stop.
6. Put a mid-speech tag where a speaker would naturally pause.
7. Leave tags out in a quick two-person exchange - and put one back before the reader loses track.
8. Read the scene aloud; wherever a listener asks who spoke, add a tag or a beat.

• "Is the train late?" asked Anjali.
• "Twenty minutes," said the porter. "Maybe more."
• Farhan dropped a bag on the bench. "Then we have time for chai."
• "I'll hold the tickets," said Olivia.
• "Did you pack the charger?" Tom checked every pocket. "Never mind. Found it."
• "The ferry is full," the guard in Mombasa said, "but another leaves at noon."

• "Get down," whispered Nandini.
• "Hurry!" Rohan was already running.
• Aarav grinned. "I told you it would rain."
• "I'm not angry," said Grace. "I'm disappointed."
• "Right," Mr Hughes said, "books away."
• "We'll plant tomorrow," said Ana in Lima, "if the ground is soft."

Quoting in essays

Three standard ways to fit a quotation into an essay sentence.

In every case the quotation marks go round the source's exact words - and only those. Your own words stay outside.

This is step two of the Mark Test: these are someone's exact words, so the marks go round exactly those words, and nothing else.

Most integration problems are grammar problems. The quotation arrives in the middle of your sentence, and the two do not fit.

The fix is almost always to quote less, or to change your own lead-in. The exact words inside the marks never change, apart from the small, marked changes the next section teaches.

After the quotation, explain it. Teachers often call this the quotation sandwich: introduce it, quote it, then say what it shows. A quotation without the last layer leaves the reader to do your thinking.

Think of a quotation as a piece cut from someone else's jigsaw. You cannot reshape the piece - its edges are the writer's exact words. So you shape the gap in your own sentence to fit it. A signal phrase is a short gap with a comma at its edge. A complete sentence and a colon is a frame that holds the piece up. A woven phrase is a gap cut so neatly that the piece slides in and the picture carries on without a seam.

Long quotations are set differently. When a quotation runs to several lines, most academic styles set it as an indented block, without quotation marks, introduced by your own sentence and usually a colon. The limit depends on the house style: MLA, for example, uses a block for prose running to more than four lines. For school essays, though, a long quotation is usually a sign that you should quote less.

Here is the case that takes judgement: the woven phrase at the end of your sentence, and what happens to the full stop. Macbeth calls life "a walking shadow". Macbeth calls life "a walking shadow." The first puts the full stop outside the closing mark, because Shakespeare's line does not end there. That is the usual British (logical) practice. The second puts it inside, which is the usual American practice for every quotation. Both are standard; section 29 compares them in detail. So in this section, look at where the quoted words sit in your sentence rather than at that last mark. Put a woven phrase in the middle of a sentence, and the question does not arise: Macbeth calls life "a walking shadow" in his despair. The other half of the judgement is how much to quote. The whole line - "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player" - gives the reader more, but it is harder to weave in. Three words - "a walking shadow" - slide into your sentence and put the spotlight exactly where your point is. In an essay, the shortest quotation that proves the point is usually the strongest.

Some of the most quoted lines in English are quoted wrongly. People often write that Austen's novel begins, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man must be in want of a wife.' Austen's actual sentence is longer: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." The missing words - in possession of a good fortune - are the whole joke: the claim is about money, not love. That is why quotation marks are a promise. Inside them, the reader expects the writer's exact words, commas and all. Quote from the text in front of you, not from memory or from a website that quoted someone else, and a single careful look will protect you from the most common essay mistake of all.

Where a full stop or comma falls after a woven quotation is where American and British practice differ; items here avoid keying it, and section 29 compares them. The capital letter at the start of a quotation that begins mid-sentence is handled differently by different styles; examples here quote from inside a line so the question does not arise. Changing a word inside a quotation, or leaving words out, is the next section. Titles of works, which some styles put in italics, appear here in plain text. Quotations here are from public-domain works, or from invented sources that are named as such.

1. Quote the shortest piece that proves your point.
2. Choose a way in: signal phrase and comma, complete sentence and colon, or a woven phrase.
3. Put quotation marks round the source's exact words only.
4. Read the whole sentence aloud with the quotation inside it.
5. If it does not work, change your own words, never the quotation.
6. Check that no word appears twice where your lead-in meets the quotation.
7. After every quotation, explain what it shows.
8. Copy quotations from the text itself, and check every word and comma.

• Tagore imagines a country where "the mind is without fear" and every head is raised.
• Tagore's prayer ends with one request: "Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."
• The principal's promise that the library "will open on Saturdays" pleased every reader in Class 9.
• As Jaques says, "All the world's a stage."
• Austen's narrator states a "truth universally acknowledged" that the rest of the novel quietly mocks.
• In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran writes, "Your children are not your children."

• The school prospectus makes one bold promise: "Every student will lead a project in Class 10."
• According to the school council's notice, "Phones must stay in lockers during lessons."
• Tagore's "heaven of freedom" is not a place but a way for a country to wake up.
• Antony begins, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears", and the crowd falls silent.
• Macbeth calls life "a walking shadow", an image of a man who no longer feels real.
• Gibran's line "Your children are not your children" unsettles many parents who read it.

Trimming a quotation

Two tools for trimming, and one rule over both.

The rule: a trimmed quotation must still mean what the writer meant. If the writer would object to your version, it is not a trim; it is a misquotation.

This is step two of the Mark Test at its strictest: the marks promise the writer's exact words, so every change inside them must be shown.

The same source, trimmed four ways. Only some are honest.

Source (an invented report): "The river was clean in the north, but badly polluted near the factories."

Notice that the dishonest trims use the tools correctly. The dots and brackets are in the right places; the meaning is not. That is why checking the tools is not enough. Put your trim beside the original and ask: would the writer agree that this is what they said?

Brackets have a second limit. Use them to make the quotation fit or to explain a word, not to add your opinion. "The minister's [foolish] plan" puts your word in the minister's mouth.

Think of a quotation as a photograph you are cropping for a poster. You may crop the edges to fit the frame - that is the ellipsis. You may add a small, clearly marked label - that is the square bracket. But you may not crop out the one person in the photograph who changes what it shows, and you may not paint anything into the picture. A viewer who later sees the full photograph should say, 'Yes, that is what it showed.'

Two smaller conventions are worth knowing. When the words you leave out include the end of a sentence, many styles put the sentence's full stop before the ellipsis, giving four dots. And when you change the first letter of a quotation from capital to small, or the other way, some styles show it in brackets - "[t]he queues are long" - while many allow it without comment. Follow your school's or publisher's house style. Brackets in general, and other uses of the ellipsis, come in chapter 19.

Here is the hard case: the trim that is grammatical, uses the dots correctly, and still loses the point. Austen's novel begins: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." An essay trims it: Austen's narrator claims that "a single man ... must be in want of a wife". Nothing false has been added, and the ellipsis admits the cut. But the words cut out - in possession of a good fortune - are the whole joke. Austen's sentence is about money: a rich single man, the narrator slyly says, will be hunted by every family with a daughter. The trimmed version sounds like a simple remark about marriage. So meaning is not only whether a claim is true or false. It is also what the writer was pointing at. The test is not 'Did I use the dots correctly?' but 'If Austen read my sentence, would she say that is her point?' Here she would not. The fix is easy: quote less, or quote the part that carries the point - Austen's narrator links a man's "good fortune" to his need for a wife.

Film posters are famous for creative trimming. A review might say that a film is 'an astonishing failure' or 'not quite a triumph'. A careless poster could print only 'astonishing' or 'a triumph' - every word in the review, and the opposite of what the critic meant. In several countries, advertising rules now allow a complaint against misleading quotations of this kind. The same trick turns up in speeches, headlines and social media posts, where a single sentence is cut to make someone seem to say what they did not. That is why careful readers look for the dots and the brackets - and, when it matters, go back to the original. In your essays, those same marks are a sign of honesty: they show the reader every place where you touched the writer's words.

How an ellipsis is spaced varies: some styles print three spaced dots ( . . . ), others three unspaced dots ( ... ); this section uses spaced-around unspaced dots and never keys the difference. Some styles put your own ellipsis in square brackets [...] to tell it apart from dots in the original. Whether to bracket a changed capital letter also varies. Brackets and the ellipsis in general, outside quotations, are chapter 19. Sources here are public-domain works or invented sources named as such.

1. Quote less before you trim - a shorter piece often needs no trimming at all.
2. Use an ellipsis ( ... ) wherever you leave words out of the middle.
3. Use square brackets for any word you add or change - never round brackets.
4. Use brackets to fit or explain, never to add an opinion.
5. Use [sic] after an error that is in the original, instead of correcting it silently.
6. Leave out dots at the start and end of a short woven phrase.
7. Put your trimmed version beside the original and ask whether the writer would agree with it.

• Tagore prays that God will "let [his] country awake" into freedom.
• Tagore's last line asks: "Into that heaven of freedom ... let my country awake."
• The newsletter reports: "The Kochi team ... won the debate final."
• Jaques claims that "all the men and women [are] merely players" on the world's stage.
• The club poster promised "free entry for all memebers [sic]" on Friday.
• The guide in Nairobi said, "It [the railway] reached this spot in 1899."

• The trip report says the Class 8 group "walked ... to the top of the fort before breakfast".
• In Gitanjali, the poet asks that his country "awake" into "that heaven of freedom" at last.
• The coach told reporters, "We [the under-16 side] trained through the monsoon."
• A careless essay claims that "a single man ... must be in want of a wife" in Austen's view.
• The poster's quotation, "The play was ... brilliant", hides the word hardly.
• Gibran reminds parents that children "come through [them] but not from [them]".

Scare quotes and terms

This is step two of the Mark Test at its smallest: quotation marks go round a title or term being quoted - here, a single word or short phrase - and round nothing else.

• 🔍 Ask whose word it is. If it is being looked at, borrowed or doubted, marks can go round it.
• ❌ Want emphasis? Use italics, bold on a sign, or a stronger word - never quotation marks.
• ⚖️ Scare quotes are strong. One in an essay can make a point; three sound like a sneer.

Two of the three jobs overlap with italics, and style guides divide the work in slightly different ways. Here is the common picture, stated as a convention rather than a law.

So in handwriting and in most school answers, quotation marks are a safe choice for a word as a word, and nobody will mark them wrong. In a printed essay or a school magazine, check the house style - it may prefer italics. What no guide recommends is quotation marks for plain emphasis.

Picture a pair of tongs. Quotation marks round a single word are tongs: you pick the word up and hold it at arm's length. Sometimes you hold it up to study it (a word as a word). Sometimes you hold it up to show it belongs to someone else (a term or label). Sometimes you hold it away from you because you do not trust it (scare quotes). Tongs never make anything bigger or louder - and a word held at arm's length always looks a little suspicious.

Speech has a version of scare quotes too: people crook two fingers of each hand in the air while they say a word. These 'air quotes' do exactly what scare quotes do on the page - they hold the word at a distance, usually with irony. If you would make air quotes while saying a word aloud, scare quotes are the written match. If you would not, the word needs no marks.

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: the same pair of marks round the same word, meaning two opposite things. 'Our grandmother calls the old radio "the orchestra".' 'The "orchestra" at the wedding was one boy with a keyboard.' In the first, the marks report a label. Grandmother's name for the radio is affectionate, and the writer is simply telling you what she calls it. No doubt is intended. In the second, the marks are scare quotes. The writer does not believe that one boy with a keyboard counts as an orchestra, and the marks invite you to smile at the gap. So the marks alone do not decide the meaning. The sentence around them does. That has two consequences for your writing. First, when you introduce a label, name its owner: 'what my cousins call "the orchestra"'. Then the reader knows the marks mean 'their word', not 'I doubt it'. Second, when you do mean doubt, make sure the sentence shows why - one boy with a keyboard. Scare quotes with no reason around them read as a sneer, and a careful reader will ask what you are hiding. The safest check is to add 'so-called' or 'what they call' in your head. If 'so-called' is what you mean, you have scare quotes. If 'what they call' is what you mean, you have a label.

A single pair of marks can turn a thank-you note upside down. 'Thank you for your "help" with the project.' 'Thank you for your help with the project.' The second is a plain thank-you. The first, with scare quotes, suggests the help was no help at all - and a teacher, a colleague or a neighbour reading it will feel the sting at once. The same trap sits in shop windows across the world: "Fresh" fish, "Genuine" leather, Fully "air-conditioned". Each owner meant to shout the word. Each sign now makes customers wonder. This is why careful writers treat quotation marks round a single word as a tool with an edge, not as a highlighter.

How to show a word as a word is a house-style choice: many print styles, such as Chicago, prefer italics, and quotation marks are standard in handwriting and widely used elsewhere. This section never keys either one wrong. Whether quotes after 'so-called' are wrong is also style: many guides call them redundant, so the items here ask for the form those guides prefer. Single or double marks follow the style you chose in Practice; this section shows double. Where a comma or full stop sits after a quoted term - "inflation". or "inflation." - is the subject of Inside or outside the quote? later in this band.

1. Before you put marks round one word, name the job: word as a word, term or label, or doubt.
2. Never use quotation marks for emphasis; use italics, bold on a sign, or a stronger word.
3. Mark a new term once, on first use; write it plainly after that.
4. When you quote a label, say whose it is: what my cousins call "the orchestra".
5. Use scare quotes only when you truly doubt the word, and show why in the sentence.
6. Do not add quotation marks after so-called.
7. Keep scare quotes out of neutral reports; argue your doubt in words.
8. Read the sentence aloud with air quotes; if that is not what you mean, remove the marks.
9. Follow the house style for words as words - italics in some print, marks in handwriting - and keep it.
10. Give the meaning of a word in quotation marks: "chai" means "tea".

• The teacher wrote the word "jugaad" on the board and asked what it meant.
• The "free" trial cost Aarav 499 rupees once the month was over.
• The so-called shortcut through the bazaar added twenty minutes to our walk.
• Economists call this "inflation": prices keep rising, so each rupee buys a little less.
• Ellie's gran calls her mobile phone "the gadget".
• In Manila, the shared minibuses are called "jeepneys".

• Riya called the three-hour film "gripping" and then slept through the second half.
• The word "chai" already means tea, so "chai tea" says tea twice.
• Our coach calls a lazy warm-up "tourist jogging".
• In Toronto, Liam learned that "toque" is the Canadian word for a woollen hat.
• The advert described the flat as cosy, which in estate-agent language means tiny.
• In Tokyo, Yuki explained that "karaoke" means "empty orchestra".

Titles in quotes

This is step two of the Mark Test applied to names: quotation marks go round a title being quoted - in the common convention, the title of a short work or a part.

• 📦 Ask: part or whole? Could this be found inside something bigger? Then it is a part.
• ✏️ In handwriting: underline the whole work; quotation marks stay for the part.
• 📌 Pick one style and use it for every title in the piece.

The two-family system is the one you will meet in most book publishing, in school and university essays, and in the Chicago and MLA style guides. But it is a convention, and different publishers solve the problem differently.

Notice what stays steady. Almost every style keeps quotation marks for the small pieces - the poem, the song, the article. Where styles differ is mostly the big containers, and the choice of single or double marks follows the style you chose in Practice.

Picture a bookshelf. The books, albums, magazines and box sets standing on it are whole things - they lean at an angle, like italic letters. Inside each one are the small things you can pull out: a poem, a song, a chapter, an article, one episode. You hold each small thing between two fingers - the two quotation marks. Leaning letters for the box; two fingers for what you take out of it.

A long poem published as its own book is treated as a whole work: Milton's Paradise Lost is in italics, while a short poem inside a collection is in quotation marks. The same logic covers music: an opera or a symphony with its own name is a whole work, while a single aria or movement is a part. When in doubt, ask whether it was published, released or broadcast on its own - if so, it is usually a whole.

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: the same words as two titles. 'I have just finished "The Night Train at Deoli".' 'I have just finished The Night Train at Deoli (in italics).' Ruskin Bond wrote a short story with this name, and a collection of stories was named after it. In the first sentence you finished the story - a part, in quotation marks. In the second you finished the whole book - italics. Change the marks and you change what you are claiming to have read. So the marks are not decoration; they carry information. That has two consequences. First, when a title could be either, let the sentence help: 'the title story of the collection' or 'the collection of the same name'. Then the marks and the words agree. Second, this is exactly where switching styles hurts. If you put one collection in quotation marks in paragraph two, the reader can no longer trust your marks to tell story from book anywhere else in the essay. One more case sits at the edge. Some names are neither quoted nor italicised in most styles: scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible and the Quran, and names of series or events such as the Indian Premier League. They are proper names, and capital letters do the work.

The rule for newspapers can look backwards at first. Many American newspapers follow the AP Stylebook, which puts book and film titles in quotation marks - "Toy Story", for example - and prints no italics at all. The reason is old technology: wire services sending stories to newspapers by telegraph-style machines could not send italics, so the style grew up around quotation marks. Book publishers, universities and most schools had no such limit, and kept italics for whole works. So the same film title can appear in quotation marks in a newspaper and in italics in a textbook - and both are following their own house style correctly. The lesson is not that one is wrong. It is that a style is a set of promises, and a careful writer keeps them.

Titles in quotation marks versus italics is a convention, not a grammar rule. This section teaches the two-family convention used in Chicago, MLA and most school and book writing, and names AP and some reference-list styles as exceptions; items that key a choice say which convention they mean. Single or double marks for a short title follow British or American and Indian practice, as in Single or double? Scriptures and the names of series or events are usually plain. Where a comma or full stop sits after a quoted title belongs to Inside or outside the quote? later in this band. Italics are a typeface, not punctuation, so they appear here only as the contrast.

1. Ask whether the title names a part or a whole.
2. Put a part or short work in quotation marks: a poem, story, song, article, chapter, episode.
3. Set a whole or long work in italics: a book, film, album, newspaper, magazine, TV series.
4. By hand, underline the whole work; keep quotation marks for the part.
5. Put the marks round the title only, not round the word poem or song.
6. A long poem published as its own book takes italics.
7. Write scriptures and series names plainly: the Bhagavad Gita, the Indian Premier League.
8. Leave your own essay title at the top of the page plain.
9. If your teacher, school or publication names a style, follow it.
10. Choose one convention and keep it for every title in the piece.

• We read Ruskin Bond's story "The Night Train at Deoli" in class.
• The poem "Where the Mind is Without Fear" appears in Tagore's collection Gitanjali.
• The song "Kun Faya Kun" comes from the soundtrack of the film Rockstar.
• Harry read Wordsworth's poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" aloud.
• Sophie's article "Why Libraries Still Matter" ran in the school magazine.
• In Lagos, Tunde watched the episode "The Long Road Home" twice.

• The chapter "The Rise of Nationalism in Europe" opens the Class 10 history textbook.
• Kabir wrote a review of the film Lagaan for the school newsletter.
• The newspaper ran an article titled "Saving the Sparrows of Delhi".
• In AP style, used by many American newspapers, "Toy Story" takes quotation marks.
• Oliver's short story "The Last Bus Home" won the school prize.
• In Nairobi, Amani sang "Jambo Bwana" at the school concert.

Decades, letters and abbreviations

This is step one of the Mark Test, unchanged: an apostrophe shows an owner or something missing - and if neither, just more than one, there is no apostrophe.

• 🔍 Owner or missing? If neither, the plural takes no mark: 1990s, MPs.
• ✂️ '90s - the apostrophe replaces 19, so it goes before the 9, never after the 0.
• 👀 Lower-case letters are the one clarity exception: p's, q's, i's, t's.

Most of this section is settled across modern style guides. A few corners are not, and a careful writer knows which is which.

The pattern underneath is simple. The apostrophe is kept only where it prevents a real misreading - is for i's, As for a word. Where no misreading is possible, the plain plural wins.

Picture a ticket inspector on a train, checking every apostrophe for a ticket. There are only three valid tickets: an owner (the MP's speech), something missing (the '90s, where 19 has stepped off), or a lower-case letter that would be misread without it (p's). The 1990s, MPs and DVDs have no ticket - they are just more than one - so the inspector puts them off the apostrophe carriage, and they travel perfectly well without it.

The same logic covers whole words written as numbers or dates. Centuries are plain plurals too: the 1800s, the 2000s. Spelled-out decades take no apostrophe and no digits: the nineties, the sixties. And a name that is itself a plural - such as 'the Olympics' or 'the Oscars' - takes no apostrophe either: it is just a name. Wherever you see a number or a short form, ask the same question: owner, missing, or just more than one?

Here is the hard case, and it is worth sitting with: '1990's' is not always wrong. 'Fashion in the 1990's was colourful.' 'Italy hosted 1990's World Cup, with the final in Rome.' In the first sentence, the 1990s means the whole decade - ten years, a plain plural. Nothing is owned, so standard style writes the 1990s, and 'the 1990's' is widely treated as non-standard. In the second, 1990 is one year, and the World Cup belongs to it: the World Cup of 1990. That is a single owner, so 1990's is exactly right - just as India's or Riya's would be. So the marks follow meaning, not the look of the number. Ask two questions. Is this one year or a decade? 'In 2011's census' is one year owning a census. 'Films of the 2010s' is a decade, and a plain plural. Does the decade itself own something? Rarely, but it can: 'the 1990s' biggest hit' means the biggest hit of the 1990s - a plural in s that owns something, so the mark goes after the s, like the girls' room. Many writers avoid this form because it looks awkward, and write 'the biggest hit of the 1990s' instead. One year owning: 1990's. A decade: 1990s. A decade owning: 1990s'. The Mark Test decides each one.

Some of the most familiar signs in the world carry the abbreviation slip: 'CD's and DVD's', 'Pizza's', 'ATM's this way'. The plural apostrophe on short forms and numbers is so common that some readers think it is correct. Oddly, it once was more common in careful print too. Some older style guides and publications wrote 'the 1920's' or 'the MP's' for plurals, especially where a plain s looked confusing after capitals or figures. As printing and style guides changed, the plain plural won, and today Chicago, AP and British house styles all write the 1990s and MPs. The one survivor is the lower-case letter. 'Mind your p's and q's' has kept its apostrophes because 'mind your ps and qs' genuinely trips the eye. That is the whole principle in miniature: the apostrophe stays only where it earns its place.

Most of this section reflects settled modern practice across Chicago, AP and British house styles: no apostrophe in the 1990s or in plural abbreviations. 'The 1990's' is keyed as non-standard only in items that name standard formal writing or major style guides; a few older publications once used it. Two cases genuinely vary and are never keyed wrong: capital letters (straight As in Chicago, straight A's in AP) and dos and don'ts or do's and don'ts. The '90s is described as informal rather than wrong. Numbers written as words and hyphenated ages belong to other chapters.

1. Write decades without an apostrophe: the 1990s, the 1800s.
2. In formal writing, prefer the 1990s or the nineties to the '90s.
3. If you shorten a decade, put the apostrophe where the digits are missing: the '90s.
4. Never use two marks: not the '90's.
5. Write plural abbreviations plainly: MPs, DVDs, PhDs, ATMs.
6. Give one owner 's and many owners s': the MP's speech, the MPs' salaries.
7. Use 1990's only when one year owns something: 1990's World Cup final.
8. Keep the apostrophe for lower-case letters: p's and q's, i's and t's.
9. For capital letters and do's, follow your style and keep it: As or A's.
10. Ask the Mark Test every time: owner, missing, or just more than one?

• Film songs from the 1990s still fill Nani's playlist.
• Five MPs from Kerala asked questions in Parliament today.
• Papa still talks about the cricket of the '90s.
• Grace collects DVDs of films from the 1980s.
• The MP's speech lasted forty minutes.
• In Seoul, Min-jun's parents met at university in the 1980s.

• Both PhDs in our family were earned in Pune.
• The '80s films on the channel are Arjun's favourites.
• All the ATMs near the station ran out of cash before Diwali.
• London hosted 2012's Olympic Games.
• The MPs' offices are on the second floor.
• In Nairobi, the FAQs on the bank's website answer most questions.

Contractions and register

A contraction joins two words and leaves letters out. The apostrophe sits exactly where the letters went. Whether you use one at all is a question of register - how formal the writing is.

• Ask who is reading. A friend, a character's listener, or an examiner?
• Choose. Contract, or write in full.
• Keep it. One register through the whole piece.

This is step one of the Mark Test: a contraction's apostrophe shows letters missing. Register decides whether you leave the letters out at all.

Why do formal texts so often expand? There are three good reasons, and none of them is that contractions are incorrect.

The clarity point is worth a closer look. I'd finished means I had finished; I'd like means I would like. It's raining means it is raining; it's rained all week means it has rained. He's gone means he has gone. In conversation the rest of the sentence settles it; in a legal notice, a writer may not want the reader to work it out.

The line is also moving. Some plain-English guides for public websites encourage friendly contractions such as you'll and we're, while advising care with negative ones such as can't, which a hurried reader might misread. So even formal writing is not one fixed register.

Two places are never yours to change. Dialogue keeps the contractions a speaker would use, or the character stops sounding like a person. And a quotation keeps the source's exact words: if a minister said 'We won't raise fees', your formal essay quotes 'won't', not 'will not'.

Picture one person with two outfits. Can't and cannot are the same person. At home, in a message or a story, the person wears an everyday kurta - can't. In the exam hall or at a formal function, the pressed school uniform - cannot. Neither outfit is wrong. Wearing the pressed uniform to a game of cricket in the lane looks odd; wearing pyjamas to the exam looks careless. And whichever outfit you choose, the buttons still go in the right holes: does'nt is a shirt buttoned wrong, in any outfit.

Some contractions are so settled that even the most formal writing keeps them. O'clock began as 'of the clock', and no report today writes 'five of the clock'. Let's is a contraction of let us, but 'Let us begin' and 'Let's begin' now feel different: the first is a formal invitation, the second an everyday one. Shan't, for shall not, is common in British English and rare in American. So register has settled cases at both ends: some contractions are fine anywhere, and a few full forms sound formal wherever they appear.

Here is the case that makes this interesting: cannot and can not. In standard modern English, cannot is written as one word, and can't is its contraction. 'You cannot leave early.' 'You can't leave early.' Same meaning, two registers. So why does can not, as two words, exist at all? Compare: 'You cannot leave early.' 'You can not only leave early but also skip the test.' In the second sentence, not does not belong with can. It belongs with only, in the pair 'not only ... but also'. The meaning is 'you can do two things', not 'you are not able'. Try the contraction test: 'You can't only leave early' changes the meaning. That is the sign that the words must stay apart. So the choice is not about formality here. Ask what not belongs to. If not cancels can - you are not able - write cannot, or can't in an informal piece. If not belongs to the words after it, write can not, and never contract it. The same care applies to it's. Before you write it's, say 'it is' or 'it has' in its place. If neither fits - 'the dog wagged it is tail' - the word is its, with no apostrophe, in every register.

Why do so many people write 'should of'? Because contractions are sound first. Say 'should have' quickly and it becomes should've, which sounds exactly like 'should of'. A writer who has only heard the phrase writes down what the ear caught. The same thing happens with could of, would of and must of. Novelists sometimes use this on purpose. In dialogue, a writer may spell a character's speech the way it sounds - gonna, wanna, y'all, ain't - to show how a person talks. That is a deliberate choice about voice, and it belongs inside quotation marks. Outside them, in the writer's own formal voice, the standard forms return: going to, want to, should have.

This section is about the register of contractions. Its and it's, your and you're, and their and they're were met in sections 5 and 14; decades such as the '90s, which also drop letters, were section 26's job. Quoting a source exactly was section 22. No single rule of English bans contractions from formal writing. A teacher, exam board, school or publisher may ask for full forms, and then you follow that instruction. When no register is stated, match the reader, and keep one choice through the piece.

1. Ask who will read the piece before you choose.
2. Use contractions in messages, dialogue, speeches and informal prose.
3. In formal essays, reports, exam answers and official letters, write full forms unless told otherwise.
4. Keep one register through a piece.
5. Leave a character's contractions in dialogue.
6. Never expand or contract words inside a quotation.
7. Put the apostrophe where the letters are missing: doesn't, not does'nt.
8. Write should have or should've, never should of.
9. Say 'it is' or 'it has' before you write it's.
10. Keep can not as two words only when not belongs to the words after it.

• "I can't find my phone anywhere," said Aarav, checking every pocket.
• Meena's message said: Running late, don't wait for me!
• The survey in Jaipur does not support the council's claim.
• We're here tonight because we'll need every volunteer.
• The applicant has not supplied a birth certificate.
• In Nairobi, Wanjiru wrote that the bus should've left at six.

• The minister said, "We won't raise school fees this year."
• "I did not take your pen," said Kavya, very slowly.
• Dev's train had gone, and it'd been a long wait for nothing.
• It's rained every day since the school trip began.
• The hall opens at nine o'clock for the formal ceremony.
• In Lima, Sofia can not only sing but also play the charango.

Apostrophes in names and places

A proper name belongs to its owner, and so does its spelling. Before you apply any apostrophe rule, copy the name as its owner writes it.

• Check the name. How does the person, business or place write it?
• Copy it exactly. Keep or leave out the apostrophe as the name does.
• Then add your mark. If the name owns something, add 's or s' after the whole name.

The Mark Test still does its job in your own sentence - owner or missing letters? - but a proper name has already made its choice: copy the name first, then add any mark your sentence needs.

Where do the apostrophes inside names come from? Not from English possession.

Business names follow their owners' choices, and those choices change. Waterstone's became Waterstones in 2012. Lloyds Bank and Lloyd's of London are two different companies, and one apostrophe is part of how you tell them apart.

Places vary by country and by decision. The United States Board on Geographic Names has long discouraged possessive apostrophes in official place names, so Pikes Peak has none - with only a handful of exceptions, Martha's Vineyard the best known. Sydney writes Kings Cross; London writes King's Cross.

Names that begin with St vary too. Some write St with no full stop, some St. with one, as a school or church chooses. The same rule applies: copy the name's own form.

Picture a shop's signboard fixed above the door, painted in the owner's own letters. You can write about the shop - its sale, its owner, its new branch - and you can hang a tag from the signboard to show that something belongs to it. But you cannot climb up and repaint the board. If it says HARRODS, you do not paint in an apostrophe. If it says McDONALD'S, you do not paint one out. The board is theirs; the tag is yours.

What happens when a name that already ends in 's needs to own something? McDonald's is already a possessive form. Most writers do not add a second one: they write 'McDonald's new menu', not 'McDonald's's new menu'. The same goes for Haldiram's and Sainsbury's. With a name ending in a plain s, such as Harrods, writers differ, as with James's and James' in section 12: 'Harrods' sale' and 'Harrods's sale' are both seen. Many writers avoid the question by using the name as a describing word: 'the Harrods sale', 'the McDonald's menu'.

Here is the case that makes this interesting: a family name with an apostrophe, used for the whole family, owning something. The D'Souza family lives upstairs. Start with the name, spelled as the family spells it: D'Souza. Make the plural for the whole family by adding s: the D'Souzas. Nothing about the name's own apostrophe changes. Now the family owns a flat. The owner word is the plural, D'Souzas, which ends in s, so it takes only an apostrophe: the D'Souzas' flat. The word now carries two apostrophes, each doing a different job. The first is part of the name. The second shows the owners. Compare: 'Mrs D'Souza's flat' - one owner. 'The D'Souzas' flat' - the whole family. 'The D'Souza's flat' - the trap: it reads as one person called D'Souza, not the family. The same steps work for O'Brien: O'Brien's bike (one owner), the O'Briens (the family), the O'Briens' dog (the family owns it). Name first, plural second, owner mark last.

Some of the most famous 'possessive' names are not possessives at all. Starbucks looks like 'Starbuck's' with the apostrophe dropped, but the coffee company took its name from Starbuck, a character in the novel Moby-Dick. There was never a Mr Starbuck who owned it. Meanwhile, McDonald's really was named after two owners, the brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald - and it keeps an apostrophe that, by strict grammar, would sit after the s, as McDonalds', for two brothers. Nobody writes it that way. A brand name is not a grammar exercise, and it keeps the form it chose.

This section is about proper names: people, families, businesses and places. Ordinary possession was sections 2 and 11, names ending in s were section 12, and names in other languages - including the Irish O' and the Hawaiian 'okina, which is a letter rather than an apostrophe - return in section 37. Business and place names change. Before stating how a real name is spelled, check the owner's own website, sign or official record. Where a person writes their own name in more than one way, use the form they use.

1. Check how a person, business or place writes its own name.
2. Copy that spelling exactly, apostrophe or no apostrophe.
3. Never add an apostrophe to Harrods, Starbucks or a similar name.
4. Never remove one from McDonald's, O'Brien or a similar name.
5. Keep the name's own apostrophe in its place.
6. For one owner, add 's after the whole name: O'Brien's.
7. For a whole family, make the plural first: the D'Souzas.
8. Then add only the apostrophe: the D'Souzas' flat.
9. Do not add a second 's to a name like McDonald's.
10. Respect a person's chosen form, such as Dsouza, if that is how they write it.

• Mrs D'Souza's cake shop in Bandra stays open until nine.
• The quiz team from St Joseph's School won the trophy in Pune.
• We bought bhujia from Haldiram's on the way home.
• Liam O'Brien's train leaves King's Cross at ten.
• Harrods and Selfridges are two famous department stores in London.
• Luca D'Angelo runs a small bakery in Naples.

• Anita D'Mello teaches music at a school in Mangaluru.
• The D'Souzas' new flat is near the railway station.
• The airline ticket printed Mr D'Souza's surname as DSOUZA.
• Lloyds Bank and Lloyd's of London are two different companies.
• In Sydney, the district of Kings Cross is written without an apostrophe.
• Kenji's cousin in Osaka ordered fries at McDonald's.

Inside or outside the quote?

Commas and full stops are where the two styles part company. Question marks, exclamation marks, colons and semicolons behave the same in both.

• 🔍 Name the style your school, magazine or publisher uses.
• ❓ Ask what the mark belongs to - the quoted words or your sentence.
• 📚 Keep one style from the first quotation to the last.

This is step three of the Mark Test, done with care: place the mark - and for commas and full stops, place it by the style you have chosen.

Watch the two styles side by side on lines where they disagree, and on lines where they agree.

Notice the third row. When the quotation is a complete sentence that ends the whole sentence, its own full stop does both jobs, so both styles put it inside. And in the fourth row, the quoted sentence loses its full stop altogether - two end marks never stand side by side - and the writer's question mark ends everything, outside.

(The table uses double marks throughout, as Indian schools commonly do. Many British publishers put single marks first - a separate choice, from section 19.)

Picture the closing quotation mark as a garden gate. In British style, the gatekeeper checks every small mark: 'Did you come from inside the garden?' If the full stop came with the quoted words, it stays in; if it belongs to the writer's sentence, it waits outside. The American gatekeeper waves every comma and full stop inside without asking. Question marks and exclamation marks are checked by both gatekeepers alike.

When you quote a single word or a title, you are quoting a label, not a sentence, so it never carries its own comma or full stop. That makes these the clearest cases to practise on. In British style the mark goes outside every time: the word "shabash", the poem "The Tyger". In American style it goes inside every time. If you remember one pair, remember this: the note said "later". (British) and the note said "later." (American).

Here is where logical style needs judgement. First, dialogue. "The bus," said Priya, "is late." Priya did not pause with a comma after 'bus' - the comma is there because of the reporting words. A strictly logical writer might put it outside. But British fiction publishers conventionally place it inside, as American ones do, treating the comma as part of the speech. So in stories, both styles look the same; the difference shows up in essays, reports and articles that quote words and phrases. Second, a quoted sentence that ends yours. Priya said, "The bus is late." Does the full stop belong to Priya or to you? To both. British style lets one mark serve both sentences and places it inside. Third, a quotation that starts a longer sentence of yours. The phrase "a small miracle", which the critic used twice, became the headline. British style puts the comma outside, because the critic's phrase had none; American style puts it inside. So in British style the question is always 'whose mark is it?', and the answer is sometimes 'both'. In American style the question only arises for ? and !.

Which style is 'correct' in Indian English? Both appear. Open a British-style Indian newspaper and you may find: The minister called the plan "ambitious". Open an Indian magazine that follows American style and you may find: The minister called the plan "ambitious." School textbooks, exam papers and publishers each make their own choice, and some mix double marks with logical placement. The surprise is how little this matters to a careful reader - and how much consistency matters. A reader glides past either style. What catches the eye is a piece that uses one in the first paragraph and the other in the third. The rule a careful writer carries is not 'inside' or 'outside'. It is 'choose, then keep'.

This section covers placement at the closing mark only. Single versus double marks first is section 19; titles in quotation marks are section 25. Style guides differ in detail - Master section 34 compares them - so this section states only the settled core: American inside for commas and full stops, British inside only when they belong, ? and ! by meaning in both, colons and semicolons outside. Practice items name the style whenever placement of a comma or full stop is keyed; neither style is ever marked as an error on its own.

1. Find out which style your school, exam, magazine or publisher uses.
2. If you choose freely, choose one and write it at the top of your draft.
3. American style: every comma and full stop inside the closing mark.
4. British style: inside only when the mark belongs to the quoted words.
5. In dialogue, put the comma before the reporting words inside - both styles do.
6. Place ? and ! by meaning: inside if the quotation asks or exclaims, outside if your sentence does.
7. Keep colons and semicolons outside unless they are part of the quotation.
8. Never end with two end marks side by side.
9. Before you submit, scan every closing mark once to check the style never switches.

• "I'll be late," said Ananya.
• The label on the tin said "Best before March".
• Our principal called the result "a fine beginning."
• Our class compared "Ozymandias", "The Tyger" and "Mending Wall".
• She wrote "yes," "no," and "maybe" on three cards.
• Did the guide in Nairobi really say "No photos"?

• Priya asked, "Is the library open?"
• Dadi's favourite word is "shabash".
• The notice read "Silence in the reading room"; nobody argued.
• "We're nearly there," said Tom. "Two more stops."
• The review called the film "brave, funny and far too long."
• The sign in Kyoto said "Please remove your shoes".

Edit for a real reader

The Mark Test is the editor's routine at every mark: owner, missing letters, or exact words? Then place the mark by the rule, or by the style the piece has chosen - and keep it when it already passes.

• ✅ fix - wrong, or breaks the piece's chosen style
• ✋ keep - correct, a name, or a held standard choice
• 📝 justify - one reason per decision

Here is the edited report, with every change marked and every keep left untouched.

Seven fixes. St Xavier's, O'Brien, Das's, Tanvi's line, Ms Kapoor's comma and the poem title all stay exactly as they were.

The club's message to members sits beside the report: "Loved the '90s photos? They're on the board till Friday!" It is informal, so the '90s and They're are fine. The same editor who fixed 1990's in the report leaves them alone here.

Think of a tailor making final adjustments before a wedding. She checks every seam and button. Most are right, and she leaves them. The school badge sewn on the pocket is the school's own design, and she would never change it. Where a seam has slipped, she re-stitches that seam - only that one. An editor running the Mark Test does the same: tests every mark, keeps names and held choices, and re-stitches only what has slipped.

Edit in the reader's order, from the first line to the last, and run the Mark Test at every apostrophe and every quotation mark. For apostrophes, ask 'owner or missing letters - or neither?' For quotation marks, ask 'exact words, or a title or term?' Then check placement against the piece's style. Reading in order catches the pairs a rule-by-rule hunt misses - like a question mark that must move inside a quotation that also contains an it's.

Here is where editing a whole text needs judgement. First, the same mark can be a keep in one piece and a fix in another. 'The '90s' is a keep in the club's message and a fix in the formal report. The rule has not changed; the register has. Second, some choices belong to the house style and some to the writer. James's or James', single or double marks first, American or British placement - the magazine decides, and the editor follows it and says why. When there is no house style, the editor follows the writer's own pattern and brings in nothing new. Third, meaning comes before marks. He said that "he had first walked its lanes" can become reported speech without marks, or direct speech in the first person. Only one is honest if you do not know his exact words - so the editor removes the marks rather than inventing a quotation. Fourth, names are facts, not punctuation. St Xavier's, O'Brien and McDonald's are spelled as their owners spell them. An editor who applies the possessive rule to a name has stopped reading as a reader. So: test every mark, fix the fewest, follow the house style, and write a reason for each change.

Two students edit the same report. The first returns it with fifteen changes. St Xavier's has become St Xaviers'. O'Brien has become OBrien. Das's is now Das'. Every contraction in the dialogue is spelled out. The poem's title has lost its quotation marks. And the question mark is still outside Ms Kapoor's question, because the student was busy elsewhere. The second returns it with seven small changes, each with a note: 'plain plural', 'decade', 'house style', 'reported speech', 'belonging', 'new speaker', 'her question'. The surprise is that the shorter edit is the more thorough one. It found every real fault and introduced no new ones. The longer edit changed a school's name, a person's name and a speaker's words - and missed one of the faults that mattered.

The capstone keys only faults taught in the chapter up to S29: apostrophes in plain plurals and in 'the 1990's' in formal writing, it's for its, quotation marks round reported speech, a speaker's ? outside the closing mark, two speakers in one paragraph, and placement that breaks the piece's named style. It keeps proper names, James's or James' when held, the '90s in informal writing, contractions in speech, and titles in quotation marks. No key contradicts an earlier Craft key.

1. Find the house style first: which marks come first, which placement, which form for names ending in s.
2. Read the whole piece once before changing anything.
3. Then go line by line, running the Mark Test at every apostrophe and quotation mark.
4. Fix what is wrong or breaks the house style.
5. Never change a proper name, and never change the words inside a quotation.
6. Keep contractions that suit the register - always inside speech.
7. When one fix is made, look for every other instance of the same fault.
8. Write a one-line reason beside every change, and beside every keep you were tempted to change.

Finish by reading the edited piece aloud once, as a stranger would.

• Mr Das's photos of Mumbai in the 1990s filled the corridor.
• The city and its markets have changed since then.
• Ms Kapoor then asked, "Who can name the architect?"
• Mr O'Brien called the Fort district "a library in stone".
• "I'd love that," said Mr O'Brien.
• Our visitor from Nairobi, Ms Wanjiru, said, "Every old wall has a story."

• Mr Rao said that he had first visited the fort in 1998.
• We ended with the poem "Where the Mind is Without Fear".
• "Can we come back next year?" asked Tanvi.
• "Of course," said Ms Hughes.
• Loved the '90s photos? They're on the board till Friday!
• A student from Seoul asked what "heritage" means.

Thinking like a writer · ages 16–19

A short history of the apostrophe

The Mark Test asks whether something is owned or letters are missing - and the history of the apostrophe explains why one mark answers both questions: it began as a sign of missing letters and was later given the job of possession.

• 🔍 find the job: letters missing, or an owner?
• 📎 trace the owner's s back to the old -es ending
• 📚 check every date claim: a broad century, or a made-up year?

The word itself is Greek. Apostrophos meant 'turned away', and grammarians used it for the sign that showed a sound had been turned away - dropped from a word. The word reached English through Latin and French. (English also has a figure of speech called apostrophe, where a speaker turns away to address someone absent; it comes from the same Greek root.)

The 'his genitive' idea is different: it is a theory that turned out to be wrong. Writers did sometimes write 'the king his crown', and some grammarians concluded that 's was short for his. But the -es ending is centuries older than those phrases, and 's works where his cannot: 'the queen's crown' does not mean 'the queen his crown'.

Picture the apostrophe as a tool borrowed for one job and then kept in the toolbox for a second. It arrived as a patch for a gap - a little mark hung where letters had fallen out. Printers then found the same patch fitted neatly over the old possessive ending, where an unspoken e had fallen out of -es. One tool, two jobs, and every modern rule is about telling the jobs apart.

This history sets up the whole band. S32 looks at the grocer's apostrophe - plurals such as potato's - and at why a mark with two jobs tempts writers to give it a third. S33 asks when a phrase like 'teachers college' is possessive at all. And S37 shows other languages using the same mark only for missing letters, much as English printers first did in the 16th century.

Here is the hard case: why does its, the possessive of it, have no apostrophe, when every other owner seems to take one? Start with Old English. There, the possessive of hit ('it') was his - the same form as the possessive of he. Early English Bible translations and older texts often say 'his' where modern English says 'its'. The word its appeared later, around the end of the 16th century, and for a while some writers spelled it it's. Meanwhile the pronoun possessives - his, hers, ours, yours, theirs - never took an apostrophe. They are whole words, not nouns with an owner's ending. As its settled in, it joined that family. And it's, the form with the apostrophe, came to belong to the other job: omission, for it is or it has. So the modern rule is not arbitrary. Its is a possessive pronoun, like his, and pronoun possessives do not take apostrophes. It's is a contraction, and contractions do. The trap exists because two histories met at the same spelling. When you are unsure, use the Mark Test: can you say 'it is' or 'it has' in its place? If yes, the letters are missing and the apostrophe stays.

The apostrophe in king's may itself mark a missing letter. In Middle English, kinges had an ending spelled -es. When the e stopped being spoken, the apostrophe could sit where it had been - one common account of why the mark of omission slid so easily into the job of possession. On this account, every 's you write is a small fossil of a lost vowel. A second surprise: English once used his where we now use its. A modern reader of older texts may be startled to see a thing described with his - a tree and his branches. That is not a mistake by the writer; it is how the language worked before its settled in.

Practice was uneven. Printers did not all change at once, and a single book from the period may mix older and newer habits. The 16th century is given as a century on purpose; so is the settling of 's and s' across the 17th and 18th centuries. The link between the dropped e of -es and the possessive apostrophe is one common account, not a recorded decision. Old English also had possessive endings other than -es, for other kinds of nouns; this section follows only the -es ending that survives today.

1. Say the apostrophe entered English printing in the 16th century as a mark of omission, and hedge any more exact date.
2. Trace possessive 's to the Old English -es genitive, and give cyninges, 'of the king', as the example.
3. Reject the 'his genitive' theory with a reason: 's works where his cannot, as in 'the queen's crown'.
4. Date the settling of 's and s' broadly, to the 17th and 18th centuries.
5. Explain its with the pronoun family: his, hers, its - no apostrophes.
6. Keep history and rules apart: the story explains today's standard, and today's standard still applies.

• Meera's notes say the apostrophe began as a mark of omission.
• Arjun didn't know that Old English wrote cyninges for king's.
• The printers' new mark, Kavya learned, first stood for lost letters.
• Oliver's old poetry book prints o'er for over and ne'er for never.
• Grace said, "The owner's s is older than the apostrophe."
• Pierre's teacher explained that "apostrophos" is a Greek word.

• The grammarians' old theory, Ishaan found, was simply wrong.
• Nisha's teacher wrote "cyninges" on the board.
• Farhan's essay says it's wrong to read 's as his.
• The children's edition, Sophie noticed, kept every apostrophe.
• Thomas asked, "Was the apostrophe always used for owners?"
• Lucia's Italian book prints l'amico with the same mark of omission.

The grocer's apostrophe

The Mark Test asks whether something is owned or letters are missing - and the grocer's apostrophe is what happens when a writer skips that question and adds the mark because a word ends in s.

• 🔍 find every word ending in s on the sign
• 📎 ask the test: owner, missing letters, or just more than one?
• 📚 leave proper names alone - a name is spelled by its owner

Why is the error so common? Several pressures push in the same direction.

Attitudes vary. In the UK, the Apostrophe Protection Society was founded by John Richards in 2001 to encourage correct use; he closed it in 2019, and it was widely reported that he felt the campaign had not turned the tide. Some writers argue the apostrophe could be dropped altogether, since speech manages without it. Most linguists describe rather than scold: a common error shows where a rule is hard to learn.

Picture the apostrophe as a key that opens only two doors: the door marked 'owner' and the door marked 'missing letters'. The grocer's apostrophe is the key pushed into a third door - 'more than one' - because it is the door nearest the s. It does not open, however hard you push. Before using the key, read the sign on the door.

This section builds on S31: the apostrophe's two jobs arrived at different times, and the grocer's apostrophe is a third job that never became standard. S33 moves to a harder border - phrases like 'teachers college', where the question is not 'plural or possessive?' but 'possessive or describing?'. S38 returns to the error in exam items, where plural apostrophes are one of the most common things examiners test.

Here is the hard case: if 'mind your p's and q's' takes an apostrophe on a plural, why is 'potato's' wrong? The difference is misreading. A single small letter made plural by adding s can look like another word: 'as' is a word; 'a's' is clearly the plural of the letter a. 'Is' is a word; 'i's' is clearly the plural of i. So many style guides allow, or recommend, an apostrophe in the plurals of single lower-case letters, as a special case to keep the reader on track. Potatoes carries no such risk. It is an ordinary noun, and its plural cannot be mistaken for another word. The special case does not stretch to it. What about abbreviations and numbers? Here guides differ more. Most modern guides write CDs, DVDs and the 1990s with no apostrophe. Some older or house styles used CD's or the 1990's, and a few guides still allow an apostrophe where the plain s would confuse, such as after a lower-case abbreviation. This band keys the special cases only where a guide is named. So the rule is not 'plurals never take apostrophes'. It is 'plurals take apostrophes only in the narrow cases where a reader would otherwise misread'. Everyday nouns are never among them.

Some official bodies drop apostrophes on purpose. In the United States, the federal body that standardises place names has long discouraged possessive apostrophes in them, which is why a famous mountain in Colorado is written Pikes Peak, with no apostrophe - a place 'owned' in name only. A few names keep the mark as long-standing exceptions, such as Martha's Vineyard. A second surprise: the same sign can be right and wrong in different words. 'Ravi's Fresh Mango's' has a correct owner's 's on Ravi and a grocer's apostrophe on mangoes. One mark passes the test; the other fails it. A careful editor changes one and keeps the other.

The name 'grocer's apostrophe' is a label, not a claim that grocers make more errors than anyone else; the error appears on menus, notices and websites of every kind. Style guides differ on plurals of abbreviations, numbers and single letters, so this section keys only everyday nouns as wrong. Business and place names follow their own decisions. Reports of why the Apostrophe Protection Society closed are given as reported, not as a quotation.

1. Run the Mark Test on every word ending in s: owner, missing letters, or just more than one?
2. Remove an apostrophe from a plain plural - mangoes, eggs, pizzas, buses.
3. Keep the apostrophes that pass: Today's Specials, We're Open.
4. Write plural family names with s alone: the Sharmas, the Joneses.
5. Leave business and place names in their own form, with or without an apostrophe.
6. Describe an error in terms of the rule it breaks, never the person who made it.
7. For plurals of abbreviations, numbers and single letters, check the guide your reader follows before changing anything.

• Ravi's shop sign now reads Fresh Mangoes, not Fresh Mango's.
• Anita's board says "Samosas" with no apostrophe.
• The shopkeepers' association, Imran said, printed new signs.
• Jack's cafe sells teas and coffees, and the menu says so.
• Emma asked, "Why doesn't the sign just say apples?"
• Mateo's stall in Madrid sells lemons, not lemon's.

• Priya's grandfather painted CDs and DVDs on the shop's sign.
• Kabir didn't change the name on the Sharma Sweets sign.
• The vendors' signs, Deepa noticed, used apostrophes in plurals.
• Harry's board now says "potatoes" with no apostrophe.
• Chloe said, "It's a spelling slip, not a character flaw."
• Yuki's English menu lists teas, cakes and sandwiches.

Possessive or describing?

The Mark Test asks whether something is owned - and for phrases like 'teachers college' the answer turns on meaning, which is why careful writers and style guides sometimes split.

• 🔍 ask 'belonging to' or 'for / a kind of'?
• 📎 test with an irregular plural: children's, women's, men's
• 📚 check whether the phrase is a name that spells itself

Why do guides split? Because English lets a noun describe another noun without changing form: a history teacher, a bus stop, a sports day. When the describing noun is plural and ends in s, it looks exactly like a plural possessive with the apostrophe missing.

Time and amount phrases follow the possessive pattern: one day's pay, two weeks' notice, a rupee's worth. When the phrase is turned into a describing word before a noun, the s goes and a hyphen joins the parts: a two-week holiday, a five-day course.

Picture a label and a luggage tag. A luggage tag says whose bag it is - that is the possessive, with its apostrophe: the teachers' bags. A label says what kind of thing it is - that is the describing noun, with none: a sports bag. Some phrases can wear either, depending on whether you think of the college as belonging to teachers or as a kind of college. The guide you follow decides which one you print.

This section extends S32: the grocer's apostrophe was a plural with no job; here the question is whether a plural has an owner's job at all. S34 moves the same Master habit - see where guides split, choose, stay consistent - to quotation marks. S38 shows why careful exam items avoid keying teachers college or teachers' college wrong unless a style is named.

Here is the hard case: 'a girls school' or 'a girls' school'? Both appear on real school gates. Start with meaning. 'A school belonging to girls' is a strange idea - schools are run by boards and trusts, not owned by pupils. 'A school for girls' is what the phrase means. On that reading, 'girls' describes the kind of school, like 'primary' in 'primary school', and no apostrophe is needed. But run the irregular-plural test. 'A college for women' is 'a women's college', with an apostrophe, and nobody writes 'a womens college'. That shows English regularly uses the possessive form for 'for' relations as well as 'belonging to' relations: a children's book is a book for children, not owned by them. So the possessive reading is also natural. What decides it? Not grammar alone, but convention. Many newspapers following AP drop the apostrophe; many other publishers keep it. A school's own name decides for that school. The careful answer is: both are used; if the phrase is a name, follow the name; otherwise follow your style guide and use the same form for every similar phrase - girls school and boys school, or girls' school and boys' school, never one of each.

Some of the most familiar holidays settle the question differently. In the United States, Veterans Day is officially written with no apostrophe, as a day for veterans. Mother's Day and Father's Day are written with a singular apostrophe - one mother, one father, each honoured in turn. The same pattern of 'a day for someone' ends up spelled three ways across two decisions. A second surprise: the double possessive. 'A friend of Riya's' has both 'of' and an apostrophe, and it is standard English. It lets you say 'a photo of Riya' (a picture showing her) and 'a photo of Riya's' (a picture she owns) - two different meanings kept apart by one mark.

Style guides revise their advice, and house styles within the same guide can differ, so this section describes the general tendency of AP rather than quoting any rule, and describes other guides only as usually keeping the apostrophe. Official names can change. The irregular-plural test shows that the possessive form is always available; it does not show that the describing form is wrong for phrases like teachers college.

1. Ask 'belonging to' or 'a kind of': that is where the split comes from.
2. Always write children's, women's and men's - never childrens, womens or mens.
3. Leave names as their owners write them: Citizens Advice, Veterans Day.
4. Write time and amount phrases with the possessive: two weeks' notice, a day's pay.
5. Turn them into describing forms with a hyphen and no s: a two-week holiday.
6. For open cases such as teachers college, follow your style guide - and apply the same choice to every similar phrase.

• Neha's sister trained at a teachers' college in Pune.
• Aarav bought okra at the farmers market near his school.
• The children's hospital, Zoya said, opened a new ward.
• Megan gave two weeks' notice before leaving the sports club.
• Ben volunteers at Citizens Advice, which spells its name that way.
• Sofia said, "The women's team plays at noon."

• Rahul's school holds a sports day every March.
• Tara is a friend of Meena's from the girls' school.
• The men's hostel, Vikram noticed, had a new sign.
• Lucy wrote "Veterans Day" as the official calendar spells it.
• George booked a two-week holiday after a year's work.
• Kofi's aunt runs the farmers' co-operative in Accra.

Quotation styles compared

The Mark Test says quotation marks go round exactly the words being quoted - and style guides agree on that, differing only on which marks come first and where a comma or full stop sits.

• 🔍 find the style your reader expects
• 📎 place commas and full stops by that style; question marks by meaning
• 📚 keep one style from the first quotation to the last

Beyond the marks themselves, the guides differ on titles and long quotations.

British practice is less uniform than American. Many book publishers put single marks first, but some British newspapers use double marks, and logical placement of commas and full stops is also used in some American technical and online writing. The safe claim is about tendencies, not national laws.

Picture the quotation marks as a glass case in a museum, holding exactly the words someone said. Every style agrees on what goes into the case. They differ only on the shape of the glass - single or double - and on one small habit: American curators slip the comma or full stop inside the case whether or not it came with the exhibit; British curators leave it outside unless it did. The exhibit is the same either way.

This section builds on Craft S29, which introduced American and logical placement, and on S33's habit of seeing where guides split. S35 asks what happens when a writer drops quotation marks altogether. S36 widens the comparison to other languages - French, German, Japanese, Chinese - where the marks themselves change shape. S38 shows why careful exam items name a style before keying a placement wrong.

Here is the hard case: 'Did she say "I'm tired"?' Where does the question mark go, and what happens to the quoted sentence's own full stop? First, find what the question mark belongs to. The quoted words, 'I'm tired', are a statement. The question is the whole sentence: 'Did she say...?' So the question mark belongs to the outer sentence and goes outside the closing mark. Every major style agrees. Second, the quoted sentence's own full stop disappears. You never end a sentence with two terminal marks side by side, so 'I'm tired.' loses its full stop inside the quotation, and the outer question mark ends the whole thing. Now reverse it: 'She asked, "Are you tired?"' Here the quoted words are the question, so the question mark goes inside, and the outer sentence needs no second full stop. What if both are questions? 'Did she ask, "Are you tired?"' Most guides use a single question mark, inside, rather than two. The principle across all these cases is meaning first: decide what each mark belongs to, then place it. The American comma rule is the one place where convention overrides that principle - and only for commas and full stops.

AP style puts book and film titles in quotation marks, not italics. A newspaper following AP puts the novel's title, Pride and Prejudice, in quotation marks, while a Chicago-style book sets the same title in italics. The reason is practical: news systems traditionally could not rely on italics, so quotation marks did the job. A second surprise: long quotations lose their quotation marks. In APA, a quotation of 40 words or more is set as an indented block, and in MLA the threshold is more than four lines of prose. The indentation now does the job the marks did. Adding quotation marks to a block quotation is an error in those styles.

Style guides update their editions, and publishers adapt them in house styles, so this section describes only well-established features. 'British practice' is a tendency among many publishers, not a single national rule. The typesetting explanation for American placement is traditional, not documented. APA's and MLA's block-quotation thresholds are given as those guides set them; Chicago's is described only in general terms.

1. Choose a style before you quote, and keep it throughout: double first and commas inside, or single first and logical placement.
2. Put a quote within a quote in the other kind of mark.
3. Place question and exclamation marks by meaning in every style.
4. In American style, put colons and semicolons outside the closing mark.
5. Follow your guide for titles: Chicago and MLA quote short works and italicise long ones; AP quotes most titles.
6. Set long quotations as blocks without marks when your guide asks for it.
7. Mark a placement wrong only when the stem or brief names the style.

• Rohan wrote, "Chicago puts the comma inside," and underlined it.
• Ananya's essay quotes the report's phrase "a shared habit."
• Dev said, "Our teacher told us, 'Pick one style and keep it.'"
• Olivia called the rule 'logical punctuation'.
• Jack read "The Road Not Taken" aloud in class.
• Hiro's paper, following APA, quotes the phrase "consistency matters."

• Kavya wrote: 'The poet's phrase "a quiet place" ends the poem.'
• Sanjay asked, "Does MLA put the comma inside?"
• Pooja's newspaper, following AP, prints the film title "Lagaan" in quotation marks.
• Harry wrote that the report was 'broadly accurate'.
• Amelia said, "The guide says 'be consistent,' and it means it."
• Chen's thesis, in British style, calls it 'a house choice'.

Speech without marks

The Mark Test says exact words go inside quotation marks - and the writers in this section show what changes when a writer knows that test and leaves the marks out on purpose.

• 🔍 find how the text shows speech: marks, dash, line break, capital or tone
• 📎 name the effect: closeness, rhythm, blur between speech and thought
• 📚 weigh the cost: can a reader still tell who spoke and what was said?

What does a writer gain? Three things are often described. First, closeness: without marks, speech sits on the same level as narration and thought, so the reader stays inside one continuous voice. Second, rhythm: quotation marks and tags break a page into pieces, and removing them lets a scene run. Third, ambiguity used on purpose: when a line might be spoken or only thought, the uncertainty can itself be the point.

Free indirect speech is subtler. The narrator reports in the third person and the past tense, but the words carry the character's own feeling: not 'She thought, "I will never forgive him"', but 'She would never forgive him - never.' No marks, no tag, and yet the voice is hers.

Picture a stage play with the spotlights removed. With quotation marks, a spotlight falls on each speaker in turn, and the audience always knows who holds the stage. Without them, the whole stage is lit evenly: the actors, the scenery and the narrator share one soft light. The scene feels closer and more unified - but the audience must watch more carefully to see whose mouth is moving.

This section builds on S34: once you know how styles place quotation marks, you can see what a writer gives up by dropping them. S36 shows that the dash is not only a literary experiment - in French, Spanish and other languages it is a common way to introduce dialogue in fiction. S39 closes the loop with public-domain dialogue in standard marks, read closely for what each mark does.

Here is the hard case: free indirect speech. How can speech or thought be present with no marks, no said and no first person? Compare three versions of the same moment. Direct speech: Meera said, "I can't go back there." The marks hold her exact words, in the first person and present tense. Reported speech: Meera said that she could not go back there. The narrator reports; the tense shifts back and the pronoun changes to she. No marks. Free indirect speech: Meera could not go back there. Not now, not ever. The narrator keeps the third person and past tense of reported speech, but drops the reporting verb and lets Meera's own rhythm - the fragments, the 'not ever' - take over. The third version is neither quoted nor reported in the usual sense. It hands the narration to the character without announcing it. No marks are missing, because none were ever required: the words are not presented as exact speech. That is the key difference from McCarthy-style dialogue. In unmarked dialogue, the words are exact speech and the marks are removed. In free indirect speech, the words were never set up as exact speech. A careful analysis names which one a passage is doing.

The dash that looks experimental in English is ordinary in other languages. In French and Spanish fiction, a dash commonly introduces a line of dialogue, and many readers of those languages would find it more natural than quotation marks. What reads as a bold choice in an English novel can be the everyday convention one border away. S36 takes this up. A second surprise: removing quotation marks can make dialogue harder to write, not easier. With marks, a writer can let two characters trade short lines and the reader follows. Without them, every line must be built so that its speaker is obvious - which demands more control of voice, not less.

This section names writers and describes their techniques in general terms; it does not quote them, and individual books by the same author can differ. Effects such as closeness and rhythm are widely discussed readings, not measured facts, and readers respond differently. Free indirect speech is found in many writers; Jane Austen is named because her novels are a common starting point for discussing it, not as its inventor.

1. In analysis, name the technique precisely: dash, no marks, commas and capitals, or free indirect speech.
2. Describe the effect and the cost together: closeness gained, clarity risked.
3. Never correct a published writer's deliberate style; explain it.
4. In your own school writing, use standard quotation marks unless the task invites experiment.
5. If you experiment, compensate: new line for each speaker, clear tags, distinct voices, short exchanges.
6. Keep reported speech and unmarked direct speech apart.
7. Quote novels only from an edition you can check, and only short passages.

• Priya said, "McCarthy leaves the quotation marks out."
• In Arjun's unmarked draft, one line reads: Are you awake, she asked.
• Meena's teacher said that Joyce used dashes for speech.
• Ella asked, "Who is speaking in this chapter?"
• Tom's version opens each line with a dash: - It's late, he said.
• Lucia's book club read Saramago, who marks speakers with commas and capitals.

• Rahul said, "The unmarked lines felt close and quiet."
• Deepa's diary records what her grandmother told her, without marks.
• Ishaan asked whether Rooney's novels use quotation marks.
• Grace wrote, "Without marks, I lost track of who spoke."
• Sam's teacher asked him to put the marks back for the exam.
• Amara's essay compares McCarthy's missing marks with Joyce's dashes.

Quotation marks across languages

The Mark Test asks whether words are someone's exact words; every language below answers yes with marks round the words, and only the shape and spacing of those marks change.

• find the marks: their shape, their height on the line, and any space inside them
• gloss them: say what they do in that language, without calling them odd or wrong
• switch cleanly: when you write English, use one English style and leave the other habits at home

Three differences cause most of the confusion: the shape of the mark, where it sits on the line, and the spacing round it.

Dialogue in fiction adds a further layer. French and Spanish novels often use a dash to introduce a new speaker, where English starts a new paragraph inside fresh quotation marks. That is the everyday form of the device S35 showed as an experiment in English.

Picture a railway station where every country's trains carry the same passengers - someone's exact words - in carriages of different shapes. The French carriage has pointed ends with a little space at each door. The German carriage has its entrance low and its exit high. The Japanese carriage is square-cornered. The passengers never change; only the carriage does. When you board the English line, you change into an English carriage.

This section builds on S34, which compared English quotation styles, and S35, which showed the dash as an experiment in English fiction; here the dash appears as an ordinary convention in French and Spanish dialogue. S37 turns from quotation marks to the apostrophe, which other languages also use for different jobs. S38 then asks how both marks are tested under exam conditions in English.

Here is the hard case: why does 'Priya said that "I am coming"' feel natural to many Hindi speakers and still count as an error in English? In Hindi, a sentence such as राम ने कहा कि मैं कल आऊँगा। is common. Word for word it runs 'Ram said that I tomorrow will come', and it means Ram said he would come tomorrow. The word ki (कि) introduces the speech, but Ram's own 'I' is kept. English does not allow that blend. It offers two separate routes. Direct speech: Ram said, "I will come tomorrow." A comma, quotation marks, and Ram's exact words in the first person. No that. Reported speech: Ram said that he would come the next day. That, no quotation marks, and the pronoun and tense shifted to fit the narrator (ch13 covers the tense changes). The error mixes the two: the that of reported speech with the exact words of direct speech. Read literally in English, 'Ram said that I will come' means the writer is coming, not Ram. The fix is a single decision. Are you giving the exact words? Then drop that and add the marks. Are you reporting? Then keep that, drop the marks, and shift the pronoun.

French and German both use guillemets, but they point them in opposite directions. French writes « Bonjour », with the points facing outwards and a space inside. German books that use guillemets write »Hallo«, points facing inwards and no space. The same two characters, turned round, mark the same job. A second surprise: Chinese has two quotation systems for one written language. Text printed in mainland China commonly uses curved marks close to English ones, while text in Taiwan and Hong Kong commonly uses the corner brackets that Japanese uses. A reader can often tell where a book was printed from its quotation marks alone.

Conventions vary within each language by publisher, region and period, and keyboards and phones often produce straight marks regardless of the language. This section describes common printed practice, not a rule that every text follows. Hindi usage in particular varies: newspapers, textbooks and handwritten notes differ, and the claim here is only that English-style marks are commonly used. No system is ranked above another; each is correct in its own language.

1. Read a quotation by the conventions of the language it is written in.
2. Gloss unfamiliar marks by what they do, never by how odd they look.
3. When you write English, use one English style throughout: double first or single first, as your school or publisher expects.
4. Leave French spacing out of English: no space inside the marks and none before ! or ?.
5. Open and close English quotations high on the line.
6. Choose direct or reported speech; never put that in front of exact words in marks.
7. When you quote a foreign-language source in an English essay, keep its words exactly, and follow your English style for the marks round them.

• Ananya said, "French puts a space inside each guillemet."
• Kabir's Japanese textbook prints every line of speech inside corner brackets.
• Meera's grandmother said that her Hindi newspaper uses the same quotation marks as English papers.
• Emily asked, "Why does German open a quotation low on the line?"
• Liam's worksheet uses the term "guillemets" for the French marks.
• Yuki said, "At school we call the corner brackets 'kagikakko' in Japanese."

• Rohan said, "I will bring the maps tomorrow."
• Rohan said that he would bring the maps the next day.
• Sneha's notes compare the French, German and Japanese marks in one table.
• Oliver's tutor said, "In English, no space goes before a question mark."
• Chloe asked, "Do books from Taiwan use corner brackets too?"
• Lukas said, "At home we open a quotation low and close it high."

Apostrophes across languages

The Mark Test asks two questions - owner or missing letters? - and each language below keeps one of those jobs, both, or neither, so a name or word must be read by the rules of the language it comes from.

• ask which language the word belongs to
• read its apostrophe by that language's rules
• write English round it: 's for one owner, s' for a plural owner, no apostrophe for a plain plural

French and Italian show the narrowest use. Their apostrophe is a mark of elision: a vowel at the end of a short word such as le, la, de, je or que drops before a word beginning with a vowel, and the apostrophe marks the gap. The sound flows; the spelling shows the join.

Dutch shows the opposite pull. Because a Dutch plural such as autos could be misread in Dutch spelling, the language writes auto's and foto's. That is correct Dutch. Carried into English, it becomes the grocer's apostrophe of S32: two photo's, three auto's. The English test still holds: a plain plural owns nothing and loses nothing, so it takes no apostrophe.

Picture one small key cut for different locks. In English it opens two doors: ownership and missing letters. In French and Italian the same key opens only the missing-letters door. In Dutch it also opens a side door for some plurals. In German it rarely opens the ownership door at all. And in Hawaiian, something that looks like the key is actually part of the wall - a letter of the alphabet.

This section builds on S31, which traced the English apostrophe from a mark of omission to a mark of possession - French and Italian still use only the first job. It re-reads S32's grocer's apostrophe through Dutch, where a plural apostrophe is standard, and S28's rule that names keep their own spelling. S36 did the same comparison for quotation marks. S38 turns to how apostrophes are tested in English exams.

Here is the hard case: a name that arrives with an apostrophe, placed in a sentence that needs another one. Take the surname D'Souza. The D' is part of the name, from the Portuguese de, of. It is not an English apostrophe and does not answer the Mark Test; it is simply spelling. English rules then apply round it as they would to any name. One owner: Ms D'Souza's office. The name, then 's. Two apostrophes, two different reasons. The family as a plain plural: the D'Souzas live on this road. Nobody owns anything and nothing is missing, so English adds only s - no extra apostrophe. The family as plural owners: the D'Souzas' house. A plural ending in s takes s' for its owners, exactly as the girls' room does. The same reasoning covers O'Brien: O'Brien's book, the O'Briens, the O'Briens' farm. The error is to let one apostrophe do two jobs, or to delete one because two looks crowded. Each apostrophe answers a separate question: the first belongs to the name, the second to the English sentence. Crowded is correct.

The English apostrophe began as a mark of omission, as S31 showed - the job French and Italian still give it. In a sense, French preserves the older use, while English stretched the mark to cover possession as well. When an English speaker writes l'eau, they are using the apostrophe more like early English printers did than like modern English. A second surprise: in Irish itself, O'Brien is written Ó Briain, with an accent and no apostrophe at all. The apostrophe appeared when the name was written in English spelling. The mark that looks most Irish to English readers is, in a sense, an English addition.

This section describes common standard practice. Spelling rules change: German and Dutch have both revised their rules in recent decades, and signs and informal writing in every language vary. Surnames are spelled as their owners spell them - some families write De Souza, DeSouza or Dsouza, and those forms are correct for those families. Transliteration schemes differ too: some write an apostrophe for a sound English lacks, as in Qur'an, and most everyday Indian spellings of names use none.

1. Read a foreign word's apostrophe by its own language's rules, not by English ones.
2. Keep every proper name exactly as its owner spells it, apostrophe included.
3. Apply English rules round the name: D'Souza's for one owner, the D'Souzas for the family, the D'Souzas' for their shared house.
4. Never carry a Dutch plural apostrophe into English: photos, autos, radios.
5. In French and Italian, expect the apostrophe only where a vowel has dropped.
6. Do not add an English 's to a German name inside a German sentence.
7. Treat the Hawaiian okina as a letter, and keep it when you write the word.

• Priya's French teacher wrote l'eau on the board.
• Ms D'Souza's bakery in Panaji opens at seven.
• Arjun's notes say Italian writes un'amica but un amico.
• Siobhan O'Brien's surname comes from the Irish word for a descendant.
• Jack said, "French shows possession with de, not an apostrophe."
• Leilani's home state is written Hawaiʻi, and its okina is a letter.

• Kavya's phrasebook explains that c'est means it is.
• The D'Mellos moved to Mangaluru last year.
• Farhan's essay notes that most Indian spellings of names use no apostrophe.
• Ella's Dutch pen friend writes foto's, but Ella writes photos.
• The O'Neills' farm is a short drive outside Cork.
• Luca said, "In Italian, po' is short for poco."

Apostrophes and quotes under exam conditions

The Mark Test, run against the clock: owner, missing letters, or exact words? Then ask one Master question - is this wrong in every style, or only in some?

• 🔍 scan words in s, then its / it's, then every quotation mark
• 📎 sort the suspect: wrong in every style, or a style choice?
• 📚 answer the question asked, not the argument you could have

Every suspect mark you meet in an exam falls into one of three trays. Only the first tray holds answers a careful item can key without saying anything more.

Reported speech deserves its own check, because transformation items reward three changes at once. 'Kabir asked, "Is the hall open?"' becomes 'Kabir asked whether the hall was open.' The quotation marks go, 'whether' or 'if' joins the clauses, the tense moves back in the usual exam convention (chapter 13 has the detail), and the question mark goes too - the new sentence is a statement about a question, not a question.

Timed essays test register rather than single marks. Contractions such as don't and it's are standard English. Many teachers advise full forms in a formal essay, and that advice is about tone; a contraction is not a grammatical error. What is an error, in any essay, is it's where its is meant, or an apostrophe on a plural.

Picture an examiner's desk with three trays. The first says 'wrong everywhere' and is full of mango's, it's tail and your late - these are the items examiners love. The second says 'wrong only under a rule' and holds a card naming the rule; nothing goes in without the card. The third says 'standard either way' and is nearly empty, because careful examiners leave it alone. Your job, under time, is to drop each suspect into the right tray before you answer.

This section gathers the chapter's rules into a single timed routine. Discover S4 and S5 supply the commonest traps - plural apostrophes and its / it's; Practice S14 and S18 supply the sound-alikes and the direct-to-reported change; Craft S27 and S29 supply register and placement; and S33 and S34 in this band supply the both-standard cases careful items avoid. S39 slows everything down again, reading dialogue closely for what the marks tell you about a voice.

Here is the hard case. An item reads: 'Identify the error: The judge praised Dickens' novels (A) / in a lecture she called (B) "The Moral of the Story". (C) / No error (D).' You notice two things that look odd: Dickens' has no second s, and the full stop sits outside the closing quotation mark. Run the trays. Dickens' and Dickens's are both used - AP style prefers the bare apostrophe, many British and Chicago-style writers add 's - so a careful item cannot key it wrong without naming a style. The full stop outside the closing mark follows British logical placement, because the full stop belongs to the whole sentence, not to the title; American style would put it inside. Again, both are standard, and the stem names neither. So nothing in the sentence is wrong in every style, and the fair answer is (D), No error. If the stem had said 'following American style', the full stop in (C) would become the error. If it had said 'following a style that adds 's to every singular name', Dickens' in (A) would. The lesson is not that such items are traps. It is that the stem is part of the question. Read it for a named style before you read the options, and let only the first tray - wrong in every style - decide an unmarked item.

Direct-to-reported items quietly test the question mark more than the quotation marks. 'She asked, "Where is the library?"' becomes 'She asked where the library was.' Three things move - the marks go, the word order turns from question order (is the library) back to statement order (the library was), and the question mark becomes a full stop. Candidates who remember the first change often forget the other two, and 'She asked where was the library?' is one of the most common wrong answers on such items. A second surprise: the apostrophe errors examiners set most often are not rare ones. They are the everyday ones - plural apostrophes, it's for its, your for you're. The hard, both-standard cases appear on exams mainly as distractors, placed there to see whether you will 'fix' what is not broken.

This section describes item types in general terms and writes its own items in their style; it does not reproduce or quote any real paper, and formats change from year to year, so check your own board's or test's current specification. IELTS and TOEFL essays are marked on overall language use, including accuracy; the public descriptors are not quoted here. The advice to avoid contractions in formal essays is common teaching advice about tone, not a rule of grammar. Tense changes in reported speech follow the usual exam convention; chapter 13 covers when they are optional.

1. Read the stem first, and look for a named style or house rule before you look at the options.
2. Scan every word ending in s: owner, or just more than one?
3. Say it's, you're, they're and who's in full; if the full form fails, drop the apostrophe.
4. In direct-to-reported items, remove the marks, restore statement order and end with a full stop.
5. Key only what is wrong in every style unless the stem names a rule.
6. In a timed essay, decide once on contractions and keep to it; spend the checking time on its / it's.

• Priya's examiner noted that the students' answers were neat.
• Arjun wrote, "The committee has made its decision."
• My cousin Farah asked whether the results were out.
• Oliver's essay opened with Austen's phrase "a truth universally acknowledged".
• Grace wrote the 1990s, not the 1990's, in her formal answer.
• Mateo said, "Don't touch a style the question hasn't named."

• Rohan's teacher asked who's bringing the answer sheets.
• The candidates left their bags where they're kept every year.
• Nisha's essay quoted Tagore's line "Where the mind is without fear" as its title.
• "Pens down," said the invigilator, "and wait for the bell."
• Harry asked if the essay should avoid contractions.
• Aiko wrote, "The women's team's coach resigned."

Close reading dialogue

The Mark Test's third question - are these exact words? - becomes a reading tool: the marks divide a character's words from the narrator's, and every mark on either side is a choice.

• 🔍 separate the exact words from the narrator's words
• 📎 notice what is quoted, what is reported, and what is cut short
• 📚 explain the effect, quoting the mark as your evidence

Four questions open almost any passage of dialogue.

Partial quotation is a quieter tool. 'Meher said the plan was "perfectly safe", and nobody believed her.' The quotation marks hold Meher's own words at arm's length: the narrator repeats them exactly, and the rest of the sentence lets us doubt them. The marks show exact words; the context supplies the irony.

Picture a stage with a spotlight and a narrator's desk at the side. Quotation marks are the spotlight: whoever stands in them speaks in their own words, at full volume. Reported speech is the narrator at the desk, reading a summary into the microphone. Tags, adverbs and dashes are the narrator's stage directions - pause here, say it impatiently, cut the lights mid-sentence. Close reading means watching who the writer puts in the light, and for how long.

This section slows down after S38's timed routine. It reads the punctuation that Practice S16 and S17 taught - commas, capitals and end marks inside quotation marks - and the Craft S21 dialogue habits of tags and action beats, as evidence of a writer's choices. It extends S35, where some writers removed quotation marks altogether: here the marks are present, and the question is what they are doing. S40 asks you to use every one of these readings, and every rule, on a text of your own.

Here is the hard case: '"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"' A school rule might say that after 'said Scrooge,' the next word should begin in lowercase if the sentence continues, or that a full stop should follow the tag if a new sentence begins. Dickens does neither. He uses a comma after the tag and a capital H. Do not correct it. Ask what it does. The capital makes 'Humbug!' a second, separate exclamation rather than the end of one phrase. The comma keeps both inside a single beat of narration. The effect is two short blasts - Bah! Humbug! - each with its own force, spoken almost in one breath. That suits a man who answers a cheerful Christmas greeting with contempt, and it gives the line the rhythm that has made it memorable. There is a second layer. Printing conventions in the nineteenth century were looser than the rules taught in schools today, so part of what we see is the practice of the time. A careful reader says both things: the punctuation reflects its period, and it also produces an effect we can describe. What a careful reader never says is 'Dickens got this wrong'.

The most powerful line in a conversation is sometimes the one with no quotation marks. In the opening chapter of Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet asks, pleads and explains in quoted speech. Her husband mostly answers in a few words - and his very first answer is not quoted at all. 'Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.' Austen denies him the spotlight, and the flatness of the report becomes part of his character: dry, sparing, amused. A second surprise: 'Please, sir, I want some more' is often remembered as one sentence. In the novel it is split - '"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."' The tag in the middle makes the reader wait on 'Please, sir' before the request arrives.

Passages from Pride and Prejudice, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol are public domain and quoted as they commonly appear in modern reprints of the standard texts; editions differ slightly in punctuation, so check the edition set for your course. Readings of effect - dominance, pause, irony - are interpretations supported by the text, not facts about what the author intended. The dash-for-interruption and ellipsis-for-trailing-off habits are common conventions, not universal rules. Passages about Tanvi, Meher, Nikhil and others are invented for this section.

1. Mark the line: underline a character's exact words and the narrator's words in different colours.
2. Ask who is quoted at length and who is only reported, and what that does to the balance of the scene.
3. Read the tag's position as a pause, a delay or an emphasis.
4. Treat adverbs and action beats as the narrator's judgement, and check whether they agree with the speech.
5. Read a dash as a cut and an ellipsis as a fade, then check the passage itself.
6. Quote published punctuation exactly, and describe it; never correct it.

• "Wonderful," said Nikhil, looking at the flooded road.
• "I only wanted to say -" Anjali began, but the bell rang.
• Dadi called the new phone a "clever little box" and would not touch it.
• "My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?"
• "Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
• "Fine," said Chen, and closed the door very quietly.

• "Are you coming?" asked Rohan. "Because the bus isn't waiting."
• Kavya's whole reply was one word: "Later."
• Meher said the plan was "perfectly safe", and nobody believed her.
• "Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."
• Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
• Amara whispered, "Don't tell anyone," and then told everyone.

Independent performance

The Mark Test, applied to a whole draft: owner, missing letters, or exact words? Give every mark a job, check it against the style sheet - then keep what is already standard and defend it.

• 🔍 find every apostrophe and quotation mark, and name its job
• 📎 sort each decision: every-style error, style-sheet choice, exact words or name, standard
• 📚 defend each one in a line that names the tool

Every decision in the draft falls into one of four groups, and each group has its own kind of defence.

Keep the smallest-fix rule. 'Its not about winning' needs one apostrophe, not a rewritten sentence. And keep the style sheet in its lane: it governs Ishita's sentences, not Mrs Iyer's voice, and never the name on a restaurant's sign.

Picture four trays on the editor's desk, as in S38, with one addition: a copy of The Banyan's style sheet pinned above them. The first tray, 'wrong in every style', needs no sheet at all. The second, 'the sheet decides', only fills when you can point to a line on the sheet. The third holds her words and the names - the sheet cannot reach inside it. The fourth holds what is already right. Only the first two trays change the text.

This section closes the chapter by using all of it. The Mark Test from Discover S8 does the first pass; Practice S11, S14 and S18 find the owners, the sound-alikes and the reports; Craft S26 to S29 supply decades, register, names and placement; and the Master band supplies every defence, from the history in S31 to the exam trays in S38 and the close reading in S39. Chapter 18 turns to capital letters - including the capitals that begin speech, which this chapter used without examining.

Here is the hard case. The draft reads: 'She calls the nets "the classroom", and she means it.' Run the trays. The quotation marks are right: 'the classroom' is her exact phrase, and it is being quoted as a term. The question is the comma. In British logical style, the comma belongs to Ishita's sentence, not to the quoted phrase, so it sits outside the closing mark - exactly as the draft has it. In American style, commas and full stops always go inside. Both are standard. So is it a fix? Only because The Banyan's style sheet says so. The sheet puts commas and full stops inside the closing mark, so the edit is 'the classroom," and she means it'. The defence must name the sheet: 'Moved inside, to follow the magazine's style sheet; outside would be standard in British logical style.' An editor who writes 'the comma was in the wrong place' has made the right change for the wrong reason - and would make the wrong change for a publisher whose sheet says the opposite. Compare the dialogue line '"Keep your head still," she tells every batter.' There the comma belongs to the speech as it leads into the tag, and both British and American dialogue conventions put it inside. Same mark, same position, two different defences.

The line that most needs protecting in the whole draft is the most informal one: '"Back in the '90s, we didn't have helmets," she said.' It breaks two rules on the style sheet - an abbreviated decade and a contraction - and it is correct as it stands. The sheet's rules are for Ishita's voice. Inside the quotation marks, the voice is Mrs Iyer's, and an editor who formalises it has quietly changed who is speaking. A second surprise: the draft's most dangerous edit is also its smallest. Changing players' to player's moves one mark one place, and turns a corridor full of kit bags into a corridor with one player's bags in it.

The interview, the magazine, the style sheet and every person in the draft are invented; Haldiram's is named as a real business whose name carries its own apostrophe, and nothing is said about it beyond its spelling. The style sheet is one reasonable house style, not the only correct one: British logical placement and single marks first are equally standard elsewhere. Whether to restore a report to direct speech depends on the reporter's notes, which the section assumes are available only where it says so.

1. Read the style sheet first, and note which rules apply to the reporter's sentences only.
2. Run the Mark Test on every apostrophe and every pair of quotation marks.
3. Fix errors that are wrong in every style with the smallest possible change.
4. Apply a house-style rule only where the sheet names it, and say so in your defence.
5. Leave exact words and names alone: the speaker's voice and a business's sign are not yours to edit.
6. Defend every keep in one line that names the rule or the reason.

• Mrs Iyer has coached the school's under-16 team since the 1990s.
• "It's not about winning," Mrs Iyer said. "It's about the next ball."
• After every final, the team eats at Haldiram's.
• She still keeps James's old scorebook from the 2004 season.
• "My coach, Mr Wood, used to shout 'Watch the ball!' at every net," she told us.
• "Back in the '90s, we didn't have helmets," she told Keiko, our photographer.

• Mrs Iyer asked us whether we played any sport.
• Ishita's notes record that Mrs Iyer called coaching her whole life.
• She calls the nets "the classroom," and she means it.
• "Keep your head still," she tells every batter.
• The players' kit bags and the umpires' coats hang side by side.
• Her former captain, Thandiwe, still sends the team's scores each week.