Proofreading, Translation and Other Things

As a proofreader and translator, one of my main tasks is to correct English-language documents written by Germans. What surprises me is that these people tend to be more familiar with the mechanics of grammar than so-called "native speakers" are. Indeed, I regularly come across some shocking examples of how poor the general level of literacy is in both the UK and the USA. For that reason, I have decided to devote an article to one particular irritant of mine - misuse of the apostrophe! The apostrophe. Please use it correctly. The first use of the apostrophe is to indicate possession . For example, Emily's book (i.e. the book belonging to Emily) Mr Smith's house (the house belonging to Mr Smith) The company's turnover (the turnover of the company) If you have a  singular possessive noun  that already ends with 's', you can either add an apostrophe on its own or an apostrophe + an extra 's' after it. For instance, ...

98 years ago today, a hero was born. A man whose genius cracked a seemingly indecipherable Nazi code - providing the Allies with invaluable information and helping to shorten World War II by at least two years.  If you asked others who he was, I daresay the majority of people would come up with the name of Alan Turing. They would, of course, be completely wrong. Professor W. T. (Bill) Tutte This is W. T. Tutte  (also known simply as 'Bill Tutte'). He is a man whom we all should be eternally grateful to. The sad thing is, though, that he and many others who worked at Bletchley Park have been almost forgotten - due to the posthumous accolades heaped on Alan Turing in more recent years. Now, don't misunderstand me. There is no doubt that Alan Turing was an extremely gifted mathematician and his work on German Naval Enigma should be recognised. However, there has been a tendency to overpraise his contribution - to the extent that some people seem to thi...