This sentence has an apostrophe mistake. Since "football teams defeat" has a possesive in it, it needs an "'s" ending. The corrected sentence reads, "The football team's near defeat instigated riots through the streets of the city."

Be watchful of possessive plural nouns: here, the correct apostrophe will be at the end of the word: "boys'" is correct because the subject is plural.

Here, the wrong form of “its/it’s” is used. With the apostrophe, "it's" means “it is.” The possessive form of "it" is "its." The corrected sentence reads: "The Scottish highland cow is infamous for its prodigious methane production."

The error in the sentence is “advertisement’s,” which should be written as “advertisements.” An apostrophe should be used to show possession (e.g. "Bob’s cat") or when combining two words in a contraction (ex. "it is" can be written as "it’s"). This sentence is referring to magazine advertisements from the 1950s, but the “women cooking, cleaning, and playing” in the magazine advertisements do not belong to the magazine advertisements.

It is clear from the excerpt that "Gambardella's" is a plural surname. It is not possessive and should not contain an apostrophe. The rest of the sentence is correct as written. 

This is an incorrect use of a semi-colon. If you use a semi-colon, you should not follow it with a conjunction. In this case, it sounds best to keep the conjunction “so” and switch the semi-colon to a comma: "Joe was feeling particularly happy on Tuesday, so he decided to treat himself to a cup of coffee and a slice of pie."

Semicolons should be used to separate two independent clauses that are not connected by a conjunction. "So" is a conjunction here, so a semicolon is not appropriate. Use a comma instead: "The sidewalk is covered in black ice, so you should be careful when you walk outside."

The semicolon is used to combine two related sentences without a conjunction. This one should be replaced with a comma because the second part of the sentence would not be a complete sentence on its own. So, the correct answer is "relaxed ;" because this part of the sentence contains an error.

This sentence's error lies in the incorrect way in which it uses a semicolon to introduce a list. "Knit stitches and purl stitches" are the "two stitches" that the sentence introduces earlier, so a colon is the most appropriate punctuation mark to use in this instance. The corrected sentence reads, "Knitting may appear complex, but even its most complicated patterns can be created from a combination of just two stitches: knit stitches and purl stitches."

This sentence misuses a semicolon, which is generally used to separate two independent clauses. In this adverbial phrase, no punctuation is needed. The corrected sentence reads, "Frances took a moment to collect herself before pressing the button and sealing the pneumatic door forever."