Watch your language quiz

Apostrophes mark possession or omission. The moniker the 'eighties' is descriptive of the tracks, not the owner. Dave owns these albums, so they are Dave's 1980s hits record collection. What complicates this is that 80s is an abbreviation of 1980s, so an apostrophe is needed to mark the missing '19', thus; Grestest Hits Of The '80s is correct. Equally, though, 'the eighties' in common parlance clearly denotes the decade in question and so we do not need to indicate it is a contraction, hence Greatest Hits Of The 80s is legit too.

There is a subtle but important difference here; 'disinterested' means to have no vested interest, to be unbiased. 'Uninterested' just means to not give a toss – and it is quite possible to be both. A disinterested opinion is, generally, rather more useful than an uninterested one.

This is probably the most common fail in business communications and Dos and Don'ts looks odd if you don't know how to use apostrophes, but there can be no argument. At Graphic Violence, we use capitalisation to make these terms look 'right' to the untrained eye but also to be correct; read the DOs and DON'Ts in our FAQs.

The principle of personnel is very different from the principal of personal. Principle and principal are tricky as they are true homonyms. With 'ple' it describes a fundamental truth or foundation for a belief system or a broadly applied protocol. With 'pal' we're talking about the first and most important item and so the most important function of HR is it principal function. With personal and personnel, careful enunciation will help you get the right word.