The agony of the apostrophe?

The apostrophe (') seems to be the most mis-used element of English punctuation. Students of English should be careful of copying some of the examples they may read (see above)!

In academic writing there are two uses of the apostrophe, but the first is rare:

1) Contractions e.g. he's for 'he is', they've for 'they have'.
However, it is usually better to avoid using contractions and write  the phrase in full.

2) Possessives. The apostrophe is used to show the link between the owner and the owned:
     
      a nation's progress means 'the progress of a nation'
     
     NB the plural form: the nations' progress

In the case of irregular plural nouns the apostrophe is before the 's':

      the women's results

With dates and some abbreviations, there is no need to use an apostrophe. Write:

    the 1960s were a legendary decade
    GPs have complained of poor facilities