How do you pronounce an apostrophe?

Could you give an example?

The indicate a pause and sometimes a gutteral sound or to make the next letter a little harder than normal.

For instance, in my mind, I would pronounce:

ruh ZaK

zar RAHK

But, of course, it is really up to your mind how you pronounce them with no clues from the writer. And if you're not liking the book, it's possible the author just put them in there because they thought they should, because that's how they think scifi characters are named.

Apos'trophes in fan'tasy can be a laz'y writer's way of try'ing to make t'hings seem ex'otic. Since they're usual'ly gra'tuitous, I don't think you nee'd to p'ronounce them a'tall.

- Victoria

I always read them as slight pauses. I don't know if I'm right or not, but that's how my mind distills them. I'm guilty of using them from time to time.

Shurtagal - I would pronounce it as rhyming with vertical
Shur'tagal - I would pronounce it as Sure Tah-gall

I read a book recently where there were asterixs (*) in the middle of words. (like nuka*paal). I guess that's supposed to be tongue clicks like you hear from African languages. It was really distracting.

Just to indicate how I feel about apostrophes in names in fantasies and science fiction, there is exactly one character, a king, whose name has an apostrophe in a series I've written. He dies not too long after he's encountered in the series by an underling who takes his throne and then renames the capital port city that also bore the king's name. From then on, there are no other characters with apostrophes.

The apostrophe, as a punctuation mark (versus the apostrophe as a rhetorical figure) is an indication that a letter or sound is "missing," or "skipped."

In Modern English possessives, "John's dog" the apostrophe is marker of the way possessives used to be written, Johnes dog, where -es marked the genitive. The apostrophe stands in for the -e.

I'm skipping over a lot of historical changes and twisty little rules here, but basically, it means that something is skipped, which, depending on the sounds on either side of the apostrophe, results in an elision, a pause, or a glottal stop, etc.

Medievalist said:

In Modern English possessives, "John's dog" the apostrophe is marker of the way possessives used to be written, Johnes dog, where -es marked the genitive. The apostrophe stands in for the -e.

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Even earlier–this is the part I find exciting–it was "John his dog" (but with archaic spelling) or "the house his roof."

Apostrophes can indicate aspiration in some languages (the one I'm familair with is Thai written in Roman script). For example:

'T'ai' has an aspirated initial consonant. (To know what aspiration is, hold your hand in front of your mouth and sayy 'pee'. The little puff of air you feel comes from the fact that 'p' is aspirated in English in consonant-initial position).

'Tai' on the other hand is unaspirated, and the 't' sound would be similar to the 't' in the 'my belt was on the chair'.

But...

Having said that, modern transliteration of Thai uses an 'h' to indicate aspiration. So we would have 'Thai' and 'Tai' (or 'Dtai').

So there you go.

MacAllister said:

Stamp out rampant gratuitous apostrophication, whenever and wherever you find it. It's like the kudzu of fantasy--a genre I love.

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I want a T-shirts that said "Eradicate gratuitous apostrophication".

victoriastrauss said:

Apos'trophes in fan'tasy can be a laz'y writer's way of try'ing to make t'hings seem ex'otic. Since they're usual'ly gra'tuitous, I don't think you nee'd to p'ronounce them a'tall.

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I usually think of them as a slight pause, probably because I don't know what a glottal stop actually sounds like and I first encountered them in McCaffrey, where they represent elisons.

I have put down books because of apostrophes in names. I have refused to pick up books (the Wit'ch series, anyone?) because of apostrophes. They are best avoided with extreme prejudice.

Nothing to do with apostrophes

Is it true that novellas are almost un-sellable (coined word)? And, if so, what does one do with two and a half stories (science fiction) of less than 50,000 words (currently into the third of a series featuring the same characters). From the feedback I've gotten from those that have read them, they're good stories too. Do I just chuck them and concentrate on writing the Great American Novel?? Or just give up on any idea of selling what I write and be resigned to keeping my day job? It's depressing.

Thanks Mac. I guess I keep the day job. The site offered (though I shall look for others) caters to 'all ages' and what I write is primarily for adults and is science fiction and not fantasy. It's not that they are terribly erotic (though there are, shall we say, 'adult' situations), but they're not meant for children either. I didn't even intend them to be 'novellas', they just came out that way. And, let's face it, there's no such thing as 'perfect'. I'll have to wait and see how they critique over on the Critters website.

Thanks anyhow....

..........SHOOT.....BANG!.....I WISH I COULD SPELL ERADICATE GRATUITOUS APOSTROPHICATION....(WIPES SPIT OFF CHIN...AND PULLS UP MY DEPENDS.....)

I LOVE YOU GUYS.....

SFCaprice:
Welcome to the SF/F board. Mac is right: novellas are a tough sell. However, I believe certain periodicals do publish them, on the order of "once in awhile". I did have the thought, though, that since your stories involve the same characters, why not try combining them into a sort of anthology of your own and market it as one?

CACTUSWENDY said:

I WISH I COULD SPELL ERADICATE GRATUITOUS APOSTROPHICATION....(WIPES SPIT OFF CHIN...AND PULLS UP MY DEPENDS.....)

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Wendy, you never fail to make me smile!

Salmon....

Thanks, Pthom, for the suggestion. Now I know how a salmon feels, swimming upstream to the spawning grounds. Those waterfalls are a real *****!

Anthology. Which means I'll have to finish the third one (would it be considered a trilogy, then?) without any hope at all of having the first one published on its own.

As I said......depressing. Infuriating too.

I think I'll go have some tequila. Thanks anyway.......

Mary

Check out Kage Baker's The Anvil of the World--it's a novel composed of three novellas featuring the same setting and characters. But I imagine that selling something like this to a commercial book publisher would be like selling a short story collection--you'd need some previous publishing credits.

- Victoria

It occurs to me that many authors do write multiple novellas in their novels...they interweave them as "sub plots" and tie them together at the end.

Oh, blast!

I'm going to go have some more tequila.........

Last year's nominees for Best Novella in the Hugo Awards were all published by Asimov's or Analog.

http://www.noreascon.org/hugos/nominees.html has details (and links to the stories. I voted for Kage Baker's story, myself.).

SFCaprice said:

I'm going to go have some more tequila.........

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is your story set in Mexico?