Graphotactics of possessive: the true reason for the apostrophe

Solution 1:

The apostrophe is used to indicate something is missing.

So in don't the letter o is missing.

The usage is still the same for possessives: James' indicates the -es is missing from the end the word — Jameses being the correct pronunciation in this case. Similarly with Fred's except we no longer say Fredes. This happens because old English used the Germanic suffix -es to indicate possession.

The situation gets more complex for plural entities. English uses the French suffix -s to indicate plurality. There is an obvious clash with the -es possessive suffix made even more painful by the fact that this is normally rendered as a plain -s.

• The boy's home — the boy is home
• The boy's home — the home belonging to this boy
• The boys' home — the home belonging to those boys
• Or even The boys' home account — the account belonging to an institution housing boys