Why is it so difficult? The poor apostrophe has never done anything wrong, as far as I know, but it is severely abused and we see examples of it every day.
One reason we use apostrophes is to indicate a missing letter - for example, don't which is short for do not. So why pizza's?
When it's (it is) used to denote a possessive, it's (it is) simple. The employee's timesheet. The timesheet belongs to the employee; hence the apostrophe. The restaurant's menu. The man's dinner. The server's tips.
Equally simply, we have to find a way to differentiate between one server and two or more. This is done by moving the apostrophe to after the s.
Singular: The server's tips.
Plural: The servers' tips.
In the first example, it refers to one server and two or more servers in the second.
It seems that there are two industries who just don't get it - produce people (fresh tomato's)and restaurants (fresh pastrie's)
Why is that???
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