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An apostrophe marks ownership and when letters are left out in contractions. For ownership, you add it to the possessor—your book, the student’s worksheet, the teacher’s lounge. For contractions, it shows omitted letters—it's (it is), can't (cannot), they'd (they would). Other punctuation doesn’t serve these purposes: a comma separates items or clauses, a dash signals a break or emphasis, and a hyphen links words or splits a word at a break.