Apostrophes are the curly floating commas in sentences that usually indicate possession or a contraction. There are a few set phrases and holidays, however, that also use apostrophes. In fact, ...

In French, to show that someone possesses something, you use their word for “of,” which is “de”: La plume de ma tante. Spanish works the same way: La venganza de Moctezuma. Italian, too: Buca di Beppo ...

At the point at which I gave an example of a parenthetic expression in last week's column, two possessive nouns were used without apostrophes. These were, 'Johns ', instead of 'John's' and 'neighbours ...