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Wordabulary
Word library

apostrophe

Noun B1 – Intermediate

A punctuation mark used to show that letters are missing from a word or that something belongs to someone.

"She forgot the apostrophe in 'don't' and wrote 'dont' instead."

In literary criticism, 'apostrophe' also names a device where a speaker addresses someone absent, dead, or imaginary, a very different sense from the punctuation mark.