Capital letters and apostrophes 首字母大写和上撇号

Capital letters and apostrophes

首字母大写和上撇号

The rules for the use of capital letters and apostrophes are quite easy to remember. 关于首字母大写和撇号的使用规则是很容易记的。

Capital letters  首字母大写

We use capital letters for the days of the week but not for seasons. 我们在表达星期几的时候用首字母大写。
      • One Saturday in autumn.

We use capital letters for planets – but not the earth, sun or moon. 星球要用首字母大写，除了earth、sun和moon。
      • Mercury is closer to the sun than the earth is.

We use capital letters for countries and for ‘nationality’ words.  描写国家的时候用首字母大写，以及国籍也是。
      • David is from Germany but Jana is Slovak.
      • I bought the camera in Hong Kong but it’s Japanese.

And we use capital letters when we talk about languages as school subjects – but other subjects don’t have a capital letter.  谈起学校的语言科目的时候也用首字母大写，但是其他科目不用。
      • She’s got exams in English, French, history and geography this year.

Apostrophes  上撇号

We use an apostrophe (‘) to show either possession or that there is a letter missing (e.g. the apostrophe in ‘she’s’ shows that there is a letter missing in ‘she is’)  我们用上撇号去表示所属或者是有一个字母被省略，如shi‘s 是she is的省略。

We use apostrophes with people or animals to show possession. 我们用上撇号表示人或者动物的所属。
      • My sister’s house.
      • The dog’s blanket.

For things we use ‘of’ (the front of the car, NOT the car’s front.)  表示物体所属的时候要用of

The position of the apostrophe depends on whether the noun is singular or plural. look at these two examples.  关于“ 位置”的省略上撇号取决于名词是单数的还是复数的，看看这两个例子。
      • My friend’s house. This is about one friend.  表示这是一个朋友的房子
      • My friends’ house. This is about two or more friends who share a house.  表示这是两个或者多个朋友共同的房子

If a plural noun does not end in ‘s’ (e.g. men, people, children) we use ‘s to show possession.  在没有以s结尾的复数名词，我们用‘s去表示所属。
      • The children’s bedroom.
      • A pair of women’s sunglasses.

We also use an apostrophe in some time expressions.  有些地方我们也用省略上撇号。
      • two weeks’ holiday
      • ten years’ experience