The word is ma'am.

[conuly]

Not maam. Not mam. Not m'aam or m'am or maa'm or ma'm. Ma'am.

The apostrophe indicates a deleted sound. For example, can't indicates that you skipped the o in not. Fro' indicates that you skipped the m in from. Ma'am is a form of the word madam, which used to not have the meaning it sometimes has today. GET IT RIGHT!

This has been a public service announcement from CAP, the Committee for Apostrophe Protection.

Comments

[rho]

Technically, it stands for one or more deleted letters. This can be equivalent to removing a sound, but doesn't have to be. For instance, change going to goin' and you're not deleting a sound but changing from the ng phoneme to the n phoneme. Or take fo'c's'le. The t in forecastle is silent, so removing that doesn't remove any sound. The re is silent as well in British English, and only serves to modify the pronunciation of the o. So you have removed letters but no removed sounds, and you still need the apostrophe.

[conuly]

True.