Booney wrote:The chick in Melbourne on Sunday at the Australia Day protests with the sign "James Cook's a c***"
1, that's a possessive apostrophe, so it appears Mr Cook owns a c***
Nope. It is a contractive apostrophe. Consider the context of the sentence. With the indefinite article "a" following "Cook's", the apostrophe signifies missing letters, to wit: "James Cook
is a c***". Had the article been missing ("James Cook's c***") then the apostrophe would be deemed possessive and the sentence interpreted as a reference to the c*** owned by James Cook.
While the apostrophe has been used correctly it may be considered poor style to use with a proper noun, in part because of the confusion. In this case the young chick might've
(sic) done better to write "James Cook
is a c***", or even more correctly, "James Cook
was a c***".
Now write it out a hundred times.
