is omitted when the vowel is capitalised, e.g. "the Scotsman", "Our Father". No hyphen is used when is prefixed to a vowel-initial word, e.g. "her daughter". A hyphen is also used in compound words under certain circumstances: between two vowels, e.g. "misfortune" between two similar consonants, e.g. "bad language", "prompt payment" in a three-part compound, e.g. "permanent joint committee" after the prefixes , , before a word beginning with , e.g. "bad tasting", "subsume", "mortality" in capitalised titles, e.g. "the Chief Justice" after "very" and "good", e.g. "very big", "goodwill" An apostrophe () is used to indicate an omitted vowel in the following cases: the prepositions "from" and "to" both become before a vowel or + vowel, as in "She fell from a horse" and "Give it to the landlord" the possessive pronouns "my" and "your (singular)" become and before a vowel or + vowel, as in "my youth", "your tooth" the preverbal particle becomes before a vowel or + vowel, as in "I raised", "he would wait" the copular particle becomes before a vowel or + vowel, as in "I found that odd" and "maybe". However, is used before the pronouns , , , as in "It was the generals who kept the power" Capitalisation Capitalisation rules are similar to English. However, a prefixed letter remains in lowercase when the base initial is capitalised ( "China"). For text written in all caps, the prefixed letter is kept in lowercase, or small caps ( "THE HISTORY OF IRELAND"). An initial capital is used for: Start of sentences Names of people, places (except the words , , ), languages ,and adjectives of people and places ( "Michael Murphy"; "Mary McEntee"; "Burke"; "Slievenamon"; "French"; "Italian food") Names of months, weeks and feast-days ( "September"; "Monday"; "Christmas Eve") "day" ( "on Monday") Definite titles Abbreviations Most Irish abbreviations in are straightforward, e.g. → ("page → p.") and → (" (for example) → e.g."), but two that require explanation are: → ("that is → i.e.") and → ("et cetera (and so forth) → &c./etc."). Like in English, follows an ordinal numeral, e.g. "St. Patrick’s day is the 17th [day] of March". Spelling reform The literary Classical Irish which survived till the 17th century was archaic; the first attempt at simplification was not until 1639. The spelling represented a dialect continuum including distinctions lost in all surviving dialects by the Gaelic revival of the late