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The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one or more letters, e.g. the contraction of "do not" to "don't" * The marking of possessive case of nouns (as in "the eagle's feathers", "in one month's time", "the twins' coats") It is also used in a few exceptional cases for the marking of plurals, e.g. "p's and q's" or Oakland A's. The same mark is used as a single quotation mark. It is also substituted informally for other marks for example instead of the prime symbol to indicate the units of foot or minutes of arc. The word ''apostrophe'' comes from the Greek (hē apóstrophos rosōidía ' he accent ofturning away or elision'), through Latin and French. Usage in English Historical development The apostrophe was first used by Pietro Bembo in his edition of '' De Aetna'' (1496). It ...
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