English. Saw this on our video? Tap the answer your child chose to check it, then open the worked answer to see why the tempting wrong options catch so many children out.
Question 16Aim for about 45 seconds
Which sentence is punctuated correctly?
Show the worked answer
Answer: B, The dog's bowl was empty.
How to work it out
The correct sentence is: The dog's bowl was empty.
An apostrophe shows missing letters (can’t) or that something belongs to someone (the cat’s).
Why the other options are wrong
A (The dog's bowl, was empty.): The apostrophe is right, but the comma splits the subject “bowl” from its verb “was”.
C (The dogs's bowl was empty.): This writes “dogs’s”, with an extra s. One dog owns the bowl, so it is “dog’s”.
D (The dogs bowl was empty.): There is no apostrophe, so nothing shows that the bowl belongs to the dog.
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