After I had
received my homework, I was a little surprised that I made so many mistakes
concerning hyphens and apostrophes. I was convinced that I’m quite good at this
field and therefore paid no attention to it during writing my homework.
In my
opinion, the position of an apostrophe causes confusion when it comes to
indicate possession. However, the rule is very easy: You have to place the
apostrophe before the s to show
singular possession (for example “my friend’s host family” – because it is only
one friend!) and to show plural possession, make the noun plural first and then
immediately use the apostrophe (for example “my brothers’ toys” – means that
there is more than one brother). Unfortunately, there are some special uses of
the apostrophe which I all found on this very helpful website: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/
The same
website helped me to understand the use of hyphens. Other sources that I highly
recommend are the Oxford Dictionary (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/hyphen)
and The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/images/ch07_tab01.pdf).
I have to admit though that I didn’t found out why “Karl-Franzens University”
is written without an hyphen between “Franzens” and “University”.
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