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The apostrophe ( ’ or ' ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets. In English, it serves three purposes:〔Quirk, Geenbaum, Leech & Svartvik (1985) ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'', p. 1636, Longman, London & New York, ISBN 0-582-51734-6.〕 * The marking of the omission of one or more letters (as in the contraction of ''do not'' to ''don't''). * The marking of possessive case (as in ''the eagle's feathers'', or ''in one month's time''). * The marking by some as plural of written items that are not words established in English orthography (as in ''P's and Q's''). (This is considered incorrect by others; see Use in forming certain plurals. The use of the apostrophe to form plurals of proper words, as in ''apple's'', ''banana's'', etc., is universally considered incorrect.) ''Apostrophe'' comes ultimately from Greek (, "(accent of ) 'turning away', or elision"), through Latin and French.〔Oxford English Dictionary〕〔"The English form ''apostrophe'' is due to its adoption via French and its current pronunciation as four syllables is due to a confusion with the rhetorical device ''apostrophé''" (W. S. Allen, ''Vox Graeca. The pronunciation of classical Greek'', 3rd edition, 1988. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 100, note 13).〕 The apostrophe looks the same as a closing single quotation mark, although they have different meanings. The apostrophe also looks similar to, but is not the same as, the prime symbol ( ′ ), which is used to indicate measurement in feet or arcminutes, as well as for various mathematical purposes, and the ʻokina ( ), which represents a glottal stop in Polynesian languages. Such incorrect substitutes as ´ (acute) and ` (grave) are common in unprofessional texts, where an ambiguous treatment of the apostrophe in digital typesetting (as explained below) is a major factor of this confusion. ==English language usage== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Apostrophe」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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