Plural Possessives Why You Put an Apostrophe After the S

Plural Possessives Why You Put an Apostrophe After the S Its common for people to wonder, What does it mean to put an apostrophe after an S? It can get a bit confusing. To get it right, you need to understand what a possessive is. Possessives are used to show ownership; to show that something belongs to someone. The presidents official airplane is one example. The airplane belongs to the president, of course. But there is only one president; after all, you dont have two presidents of the same country. So, this is a singular possessive made by adding an apostrophe and an s. But with a phrase such as the thieves jewels, you have a plural noun: thieves. Most of the time, a plural noun will be formed by adding s to it. In this case, you also change the spelling but dont worry about that now. The main issue is the final letter, which is s. Houses, cats, clouds, essays, rainbows: these are all plural nouns. As you can see, the fact that the thieves (illegally) possess the jewels is shown simply by adding an apostrophe after the noun and after the letter s. They may not possess these valuables for long unless theyre clever and know how to escape the police, but they do for now. And thats how you form a plural possessive. To recap, usually if the noun is singular, the apostrophe will go before the s, but if the noun happens to be plural, the apostrophe will go after the s. Plural Possessive Examples The Simpsons spaceship (the spaceship belongs to the Simpson family; you make the family name plural to show that youre referring to all of the family members) The dogs tails (the tails belong to the dogs) The lakes water (the water belongs to the lakes) You have to be careful with the last example because if you only wish to talk about one lake, you must write: the lakes water. In this case, thats a singular possessive. An even bigger problem these days is when people write sentences such as this: None of the monkeys looked happy in the zoo. There is no reason to use an apostrophe to make a possessive here. The sentence is only talking about monkeys in the plural. They do not own anything! However, this is a commonly repeated mistake across the Internet. Sometimes its hard to see how the possessive works. You owe me three months pay immediately! Oh, I do? Let me check my wallet. And my grammar guide. Why is there an apostrophe after months? Because the pay is equal to three months of work. In a sense, the pay belongs to those three months. Its like saying three months of pay. If you can use the word of in the sentence, then you probably need an apostrophe. Irregular Plural Possessives Now that you think youve learned all the rules, youre in for a surprise. Theres another type of plural possessive: the irregular plural possessive. The childrens work was so poorly done that the teacher fainted and had to go to the hospital. Okay, this might not really happen, but I used to be a teacher, and sometimes I felt like fainting! The main point is this. Children is already plural. You cannot add s to the word itself to make it plural. So when you want to show possession, you put the apostrophe first, then the s. Here are some more examples. The womens babies (women is the plural form of woman) The firemens trucks (firemen is the plural of fireman) The dices roll (dice always means there is more than one) These look like singular possessives, but they arent. Compound Plural Possessives You may have thought we had exhausted all of the plural possessives, but theres one more rule you need to know. It deals with compound plural possessives. For example, Sam and Dave is a compound. There are two parts. So which of the following is correct? Sam and Daves song was number one for six months. Sams and Daves song was number one for six months. The correct one is the first. Why? Because Sam and Dave made or performed the song together. It belongs to both of them. Only one possessive needs to be given. But you need to be careful. Lucys and Ginas cars are the fastest on my street. Micks and Rods views on equal rights are impressive. In these two examples, you need two possessives, one for each proper noun. Lucy and Gina both have different cars. Mick and Rod have separate views. However, what if Lucy and Gina were mother and daughter, and both of them had the same cars? Then you need to change the sentence to Lucy and Ginas cars are the fastest on my street. With compound plural possessives, its important to remember you have to think a little and decide whether you are talking about two separate people or things, or a single unit with two parts.