We all know that you use an apostrophe ( ' ) to show possession, except of course for when you don't. As I keep reminding my students, the English language is full of exceptions. Possessives of certain pronouns are among those exceptions. And, unfortunately, making a mistake on using or not using an apostrophe isn't something that spell check will catch.

One set of words I remind my students about is there, their, and they're. My example is: "Where are their books? They're over there!" Remembering that "its" is possessive and "it's" is the contraction for "it is" is another good example. And if a speaker has a topic, we can either say "Charley, who's talking about . . ." or "Charley, whose talk is about . . . "

Now you all know that I believe perfection is overrated, but, that doesn't mean you shouldn't carefully proofread your work. Recently I was horrified to receive an e-mail from a well-known company (in the communication business) which said, "Your Invited to . . ."

I'm busily working on this October newsletter because I really want to send it out -- unlike last year when "Snowtober" intervened and, after 3-1/2 days of no power, I gave up. Believe it or not, the forecast for next week (the end of October, anniversary of Snowtober) is for a huge storm, already labeled Frankenstorm. They are talking about flooding and power outages, again. So I've checked the flashlights and battery-powered lanterns. And I've still got the mega-packages of batteries I bought at Costco last year after the storms. And I'll be filling up my gas tank. And charging all the laptops and battery-operated cell phone chargers.

And we'll either need all these things or we won't. Although a big storm next week will disrupt all sorts of things (school, meetings, Halloween), there's really nothing I can do about that. And I'm actually feeling pretty calm. Could this be due to my quest for patience? As I said in my blog in February (when I announced my three words for the year), "Sometimes you just have to accept things the way they are."

So, I wish you all well and hope we escape with a minimum of damage. And if not, may you have the patience and strength to get through it.

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