Apostrophe (a-POS-troh-fee) an address to a dead person or absent person or to an inanimate object or abstract concept. (Hamilton 62)
I think this word can be confusing because we want to think of the grammatical ways of using an apostrophe. It always takes me a second to get my bearings when I see this word used in this context. I guess by now it shouldn't be that unusual for me, but I still seem to want to make a bunch of these " ' " instead of taking Shakespeares lead and addressing dead people. Though the addressing dead people or inanimate objects is much more interesting than the punctuation.
Comments (3)
Very good point!! I agree that it could be confusing while reading literary criticism but hopefully along with the context we will be able to interpret which apostrophe is being considered!
Posted by Bethany Merryman | February 3, 2009 7:57 PM
Posted on February 3, 2009 19:57
Yeah, Bethany, I exaggerated a bit in my blog, I would hope as English majors we wouldn't be confused for long over the puncuation apostrophe and the literary term apostrophe.
Posted by Mara Barreiro | February 4, 2009 5:29 AM
Posted on February 4, 2009 05:29
I must have been skimming in my reading, i missed this one completely, thanks for pointing it out.
Posted by james lohr | February 5, 2009 4:15 PM
Posted on February 5, 2009 16:15