If you find apostrophes difficult then you’re not the only one. They are very powerful when used correctly but, sadly, all too often that is not the case. There seems to be an increasing trend to omit them, which is ok if it’s just in text messages to family and friends. But if that spills over into important academic or business texts then it becomes a problem. You can lose marks and/or credibility. To confuse things even more, a surprising number of people are now in the habit of inserting them when they shouldn’t to form plurals.
They are normally used to indicate omitted characters (e.g. mustn’t instead of must not) or possession (e.g. the neighbour’s cat or cats, the neighbours’ dog or dogs). This can get quite complicated with plurals of such words as man (men), woman (women), child (children) and person (persons or people) where simply adding an ‘s’ is not how the plural is formed. Some words like sheep don’t change at all, while lamb (animal) does, but lamb (meat) doesn’t. And the plural of people is peoples.
What’s the answer? There are websites that try to explain how to use apostrophes and display many photos of incorrect, sometimes humorous, usage. Alternatively, to avoid embarrassment, you can ask a competent proofreader to check your work and they will correct apostrophes as part of the process.