3.9 Become an awesome apostrophe aficionado
Using apostrophes to show ownership is common in research papers, probably because it can help make texts more succinct and smooth.
Read the following sentence from a published research paper, and think about how the sentence would have been written if apostrophes hadn’t been used.
The results replicated study 3’s finding that people who are well read are more likely to disparage today’s youth’s enjoyment of reading.
Protzko J and Schooler JW Science Advances 2019 Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking
Below I have re-written the sentence without apostrophes.
The results replicated the finding of study 3 that people who are well read are more likely to disparage the enjoyment of reading of the youth of today.
See how the use of apostrophes in the original sentence enabled the Authors to avoid three additional uses of the word ‘of’ in the sentence? The use of three apostrophes made the sentence smoother and easier to read.