Photo by Sear Greyson on Unsplash

In 1980 my parents realized their dream of shipping the family back to Dublin. Apart from a few distant summer vacations, I hadn’t spent so much time in my homeland up until that point. High school was noisy and chaotic, but I was doing okay, except in English class. Compared with my classmates, I found myself lacking in grammar skills and any understanding of the basic constructs of language. At the time, I attributed my shortcomings to the fact that we moved around a lot, and that because I had attended a couple of different schools, I had somehow missed those lessons. In hindsight, however, I believe my lack of knowledge might’ve been the result of some of the madcap experiments, such as the Initial Teaching Alphabet, which took place in the British education system during the early seventies.

Back then, my Dad wrote a lot. Most of the time, he’d be chalking up his findings on aircraft inspections, but sometimes he wrote accident reports, I think he investigated new technologies, and on occasion created suggestions for procedural improvements. To his aid, he had this massive manual called Written Communication. I can still see it now, a thick blue binder with pages and pages of explanations, writing tips, and do-it-yourself tests.

One day, I came home from school in tears — a rare occurrence for me. One of my ‘teachers’ had made a complete fool of me in front of the whole class, because I couldn’t identify the predicate clause of a sentence. Looking back, I doubt if anyone else in the class could either, but given my disposition at the time, I simply assumed that I was useless at English — a feeling that persisted all too long.

I’m guessing the tears spurred my Dad into action. He gave me the binder and told me to work my way through it. My heart sank. The thing was gigantic, I thought I was never going to get through it. But I did. However, like most useful skills, I didn’t become proficient until many years and many hours of practice later.

Today, I can recall most rules. But there are a few, which refuse to sit in my brain — I have to think twice, every time. But for this one, I have a tip that my Dad gave me back in the day, when even Written Communication — as good as it was ­— couldn’t help.

What he explained to me was the purpose of apostrophes. If we ignore how they are used (or not) to denote possession — John’s bicycle, the woman’s car, its wheel — and instead focus on how the apostrophe is used in contractions to show something is missing — don’t, can’t, I’d, would’ve — you’ll never make the mistake of writing its when you mean it’s or it’s when you mean its.