How to Use Apostrophes in English Basic English Grammar

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hi everybody welcome back to ask alicia

the weekly series where you ask me

questions and i answer them

maybe okay let’s get to your first

question this week

first question this week comes from

aisha abdullah hi aisha

aisha says hi alicia can you please talk

about

how and where to use apostrophes

which of these options is correct okay

so take a look at the

three examples that are on this screen

and note the places

where the apostrophes are in each of

these so i’ll talk about this

the sentence is the two buildings doors

and windows

okay sure so we can use apostrophes

to show possession and to show the

reduced forms of words like it’s

or can’t and so on so those are the two

ways that we use apostrophes

in this explanation i’m going to focus

on using apostrophes

for possessives so actually to address

your question

about which example sentence is correct

none of those examples

are correct the correct use of an

apostrophe in this sentence would be

just an apostrophe after the s

in buildings so the two buildings

apostrophe doors and windows that’s the

only place that we need an apostrophe

this is because the doors and windows in

the sentence kind of belong to

the two buildings so the two buildings

are the subject

so we don’t need to use like an

apostrophe we don’t need to use some

kind of

possessive marker after doors and

windows

because we’re not showing that the doors

or the windows

are like the owners of something

actually here the buildings are like the

owners

so we mark the possession with an

apostrophe

to go a little bit deeper into why this

is

when we have a word that ends in s

we use an apostrophe but we do not add

another s to the word please note though

we do

not ever use apostrophes to make nouns

plural

as a general guide then when you are

using a noun that

ends in an s simply add an apostrophe

after the s to show possession if the

noun does not end in an s

add apostrophe s to show possession so

let’s look at a couple examples of nouns

that end in s

in the singular and in the plural form

for example

the dress’s color that’s singular and

the dress’s colors plural the car’s

lights so you can see that even though

the singular form and the plural form

have the same pronunciation

by that i mean like the dress’s color

and the dress’s colors

we understand that one is plural because

the following word is plural

so in the first example sentence there

the dress’s color

so the dress ends in s yes and we

show possession with an apostrophe after

the s

and then a singular color so that shows

us it’s one color

one dress in the second example though

the dresses

colors so dresses is plural

in speech they sound the same but plural

dresses

is followed by an apostrophe to show

possession and then we follow that with

colors in the plural also so this shows

us that it’s not just one dress and we

can hear that also in speech

so it shows us it’s not just one dress

it’s two dresses or more

and we know that because more than one

color is described there

so we can generally guess these sorts of

things from context

but again this is for nouns that end in

s whether they’re plural or singular

let’s compare this then to nouns that do

not end in s

when a noun does not end in s we simply

add apostrophe s to show possession

some examples the children’s books

the team’s work our hotel’s staff

so these all end in apostrophe s because

the noun itself does not end

in s so this is the general rule for

using

apostrophes to show possession so please

do remember we do not use apostrophes

to show plural forms of words i hope

that this helps you

thanks very much for the question okay

let’s move on to your next question

next question comes from amar ismail

hello amar

amar says hey alicia what does beat the

rap mean

and how can i use it okay cool so to

beat the rap

means to escape from punishment and it’s

usually punishment that you deserve

so it’s like you did something wrong you

should be punished

but you escape somehow so this is an

interesting expression

i found some history some information

about this expression

and this rap means like legal punishment

or like the punishment that is official

for you and wrap this meaning of wrap or

this use of wrap

comes from or it can come from the

expression to

wrap someone’s knuckles so the knuckles

are this part

of your hand so this part of your finger

really

the places where like your fingers can

bend those are called your knuckles

so a common punishment a long time ago

for school children

was to wrap kids knuckles

as a punishment for bad behavior so to

wrap something

means to hit or like strike in a strong

way like quickly

sharply so this is the verb form of

rap but because of that to rap became

associated with

punishment therefore to beat the rap

means to like conquer to overcome some

kind of punishment

so to beat the rap means to get away

with something in other words or to find

a way

to escape the punishment that’s due to

you so in an example sentence you could

say something like

i came home late and my mom was really

mad but i beat the rap by telling her

that i had to take a friend home

or he made a huge mistake at work but he

beat the rap by blaming it on computer

problems

so to beat the wrap means like to escape

somehow from punishment that you are

probably

supposed to receive you’re probably

supposed to get that

you might also hear a similar expression

which is take the wrap

take the rap so again rap refers to

punishment but to take the rap means to

take the punishment

that should be for somebody else so you

didn’t do anything wrong somebody else

did but you decide to like take their

punishment instead

so you might hear that expression used

to so another point to mention is that

this is not

such a common phrase these days you

might hear like

take the hit to me and take someone

else’s punishment

but we don’t really use this expression

so much in everyday speech at least in

american english these days but if you

encounter this in like a movie or in a

book maybe

that’s what it means so i hope that this

is helpful for you thanks very much for

the question

okay let’s move on to your next question

next question

is from hector hi hector hector says hi

alicia

i want to know how to refer to a person

who asks a lot of questions

i think it’s something like inquire or

curious but i’m not sure

for example in a job interview how do i

explain that i consider myself a person

who likes to ask questions if something

is not clear for me

okay yeah i think in this case maybe the

best word would be

inquisitive inquisitive so inquisitive

is an adjective

it means someone who likes to ask a lot

of questions someone who naturally asks

lots of questions about things

curious is similar yes curious sounds

like you’re naturally interested in

learning things like maybe you want to

look and see

lots of different things but it doesn’t

only mean

like wanting to ask questions

inquisitive

has this feeling of like really asking

questions and trying to learn things

so my kind of impression of an

inquisitive person

is generally positive maybe someone

who’s kind of smart

and interested in learning things it’s

pretty good

but if you ask a lot of questions

especially personal questions

you can be perceived as nosy so nosy is

another adjective

which refers to someone who likes to ask

questions yes but they’re generally too

personal it’s too much it’s like someone

who likes to gossip about other people’s

lives

so there’s kind of a fine line like a

close they’re a bit close inquisitive

and nosy so inquisitive is generally a

good

thing but you don’t want to be nosy so

in this case i would say

inquisitive however as you mentioned

in your example if you want to talk

about

liking to ask lots of questions in order

to make something clear

that is not how we would use inquisitive

we use

inquisitive to talk about somebody who

naturally wants to learn about things

and asks questions

like just because they want to learn

not because something is unclear like

it has the feeling of something that a

person does

from like internal motivation they just

want to know things

they’re not trying to like fix a mistake

or try to understand something that is

difficult for them at work so we

wouldn’t really use inquisitive in that

case

instead we would probably use an

expression exactly like the one that you

presented

you would say something like i’m the

kind of person that prefers to ask

lots of questions if something is not

clear to me

so that’s a very natural response if you

want to express that you are

inquisitive like you naturally like to

ask questions you can say that too

though

i’m an inquisitive person so i hope that

this helps you thanks very much for the

question

okay let’s move on to your next question

next question

comes from alexander hi alexander

alexander says hi alicia my name is

alexander or alex and i’m from brazil

i was studying collocations and

yesterday when i was studying about

coffee i found three words that i have

never seen before

one percolated two lukewarm and three

tepid i would like to know if these

words are common in everyday speech

i’ve been in dublin for one year and

i’ve not heard them so far

thanks okay great interesting question

first

let’s talk about the word collocation so

everybody can understand what this means

a collocation is a word that is commonly

used with another word

so for example with this word coffee a

common collocation of coffee is

cup so cup and coffee often go together

because of the expression coffee cup for

example

so we can also use this as a verb to

collocate

so when we want to use it as a verb we

could say the word

cup collocates with coffee so

that refers to two words or maybe more

that are often used together studying

collocations can be really helpful

because you can see which words are

commonly used together and it can help

you to make more natural word choices

so now that we know what collocations

are let’s take a look at these examples

the first word was

percolated in this case you have it in

the past tense

verb form so to percolate means to

cause a liquid to pass through another

substance that is not a liquid to pass

through a

permeable substance so a permeable

substance is a substance it’s not

solid so we can pass liquid through it

or like

sunlight can come through a window a

window can be permeable

so things can pass through this

substance

so like soil like dirt is a permeable

substance or coffee grounds are a

permeable

thing so permeable substances

are kind of the key point for this word

liquid passes through those

so percolate on the other hand is

actually like a very scientific word

so we don’t use it so much in everyday

speech to talk about making coffee when

we want to talk about coffee we say i’m

going to make coffee

we don’t generally say i’m going to

percolate water

through the coffee grounds it sounds

very scientific and very stiff and we

don’t generally say this

but you might encounter it if you are

reading some information about like

expensive coffee beans or if you are

learning about

a very like expensive coffee shop and

they want to share

information like the detailed process of

how they make their coffee

you might see it in that way but

generally percolate is

not so common in everyday speech so i

hope that answers that one

the second though uh and the third for

that matter were

lukewarm and tepid lukewarm and tepid

mean the same thing

so they both mean just sort of warm like

it’s kind of like room temperature or a

little bit cooler

than body temperature so lukewarm and

tepid

are both used to refer to the

temperature of coffee

so most people want coffee hot or

cold lukewarm coffee is generally not a

good thing

so we could say uh i hate drinking

lukewarm coffee

or this coffee is tepid so

that means that it’s not at a good

temperature it’s like this room

temperature coffee

so lukewarm and tepid are more commonly

used in speech than percolate for me

personally i tend to use lukewarm a lot

more than tepid but other people might

prefer to use tepid more

those two words are fairly commonly used

percolate is not as commonly used but

you might see it from time to time

so i hope that this helps you and good

luck with your continued studies of

collocations

okay let’s move on to our next question

next question for this week

comes from sanju hi again sanju

sanju says hi alicia how are you i’ve

been watching your videos for a long

time

my question is what is the difference

between no longer

and any longer okay nice question the

meaning of these expressions

is the same it’s totally the same we use

it to refer

to something that was true up until this

point

and into the future will not be true

so the difference is actually just in

how we make

the sentence there are a couple of

changes that we need to think about

in the structure of our sentences when

we use these so let’s take a look at two

example sentences

first we will no longer offer free lunch

for staff

we will not offer free lunch for staff

any longer

okay so in the first example sentence

you can see that

no longer comes before the verb in this

case the verb is

offer so when we want to use no longer

we typically place it before the verb in

the sentence

you may hear no longer coming at the end

of a sentence especially

in short sentences but that kind of

sounds old-fashioned

so these days we tend to use it in front

of the verb

so we will no longer offer free lunch

for staff

on the other hand when we use any longer

we need to put it at the end of the

sentence

and we put a negative we need to put not

before the verb earlier in the sentence

so

we will not offer free lunch for staff

any longer

so these are the differences in terms of

the structure of the sentences that we

need to think about

one more like additional point if you

want to use any more

follow the same pattern as any longer

they mean the same thing

so let’s take a look at one more pair of

examples

i can no longer wait or i can wait no

longer

and i can’t wait any longer

so we follow the same pattern here in

the first example which uses no longer

we put that before the verb i can no

longer

wait and i gave the example of no longer

at the end of the sentence too but this

sounds rather old-fashioned and kind of

too polite

the second one however you might notice

instead of using

not wait i’ve made can into can’t so i

can’t wait any longer

this is because it sounds more natural

so the original sentence could be i

can not wait any longer but we can

combine

can and not into can’t and that sounds

much more natural so

i can’t wait any longer so they have the

same meanings yes

it’s just a difference in terms of how

you build the sentences with these words

so thanks very much for an interesting

question and i hope that that helped you

thanks very much okay that is everything

that i have for this week thank you as

always for sending your questions

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englishclass101.com

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ask alicia and i will see you again

next week bye

[Music]

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