Apostrophes with contractions

Apostrophes are used to form contractions. The apostrophe takes the place of the missing letter.

Note: Don’t assume that the apostrophe always goes between the two words. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Apostrophes with possessives

Apostrophes are used with nouns to indicate belonging or possession. Here are the rules:

Singular nouns: (noun + apostrophe + s)
For example: The girl’s book

Plural nouns ending in s: (noun + apostrophe)
For example: The girls’ school.

Plural nouns that don’t end in s: (noun + apostrophe + s)
For example: The men’s club
The children’s playground
The data’s validity

Possessive pronouns without apostrophes

We do not use apostrophes with the following possessive pronouns:

My
Your
His
Her
Its
Our
Their

Here are a couple of examples:

The house was derelict. All its windows were broken.
The old man’s hair was dishevelled, and his shirt was torn.

As mentioned in today’s sidebar, the impersonal possessive pronoun its often gets confused with the abbreviation of ‘it is’ (it’s). However, if you remember that the pronoun ‘its’ functions just like ‘his’ or ‘her’, you’re not likely to go wrong.

The pronoun 'one' takes an apostrophe

One is also a pronoun and can be used in the possessive form, as in the expression to mind one’s p’s and q’s.

As one can see, 'one' in its possessive role takes an apostrophe.

Incidentally, one used in this way - meaning 'all of us like minded people' - is much less commonly used in American English than it is in British English.

The expression to mind one's p's and q's illustrates another exception to the general rules about apostrophes.

Upper case letters

When it comes to making plurals of letters or acronyms, the general rule is that with capitals one does not use an apostrophe.

So, for example, CD, CV, PC and RV in the plural are generally written without an apostrophe: CDs, CVs, PCs and RVs.

Lower case letters

However, with lower case letters in their plural form an apostrophe is generally used, as it is frequently necessary for making one’s meaning clear.

This can be demonstrated with the following sentence: one version without the apostrophe and one with it.

How many us are there in the word queue?
How many u’s are there in the word queue?

In American English, of course, the question doesn't arise, as in the States the word for queue is line.

What about names ending in s?

A number of religious and historical figures have names that end with 's' - Jesus, Moses, Cervantes, Socrates, Demosthenes, Aristophanes, Pythagoras, to name a few. When used in possessive constructions, most such names take an apostrophe but do not require an additional s.

Here are some example phrases taken from Wikipedia:

Jesus' life and teachings
Moses' mother hid him
Cervantes' parents
Socrates' life and philosophy
Demosthenes' greatest political rival
Most of Aristophanes' works

But notice that this does not apply in our last example, also from Wikipedia:

the inner circle of Pythagoras's society

Possible Explanation: The possessive 's' is omitted with names that end with a 'z' sound (in the Anglicized pronunciation of the name). The name Pythagoras ends with a 's' sound, so has an apostrophe + s.

In Practice: There are in fact no hard and fast rules in the use of apostrophes with names ending in 's'. From an editorial point of view, the key thing is consistency. If the text is meant for a specific publication, it's up to the editor to check the 'house style' of that publication, and keep to that.

Time expressions

A common error is to omit the apostrophe in phrases expressing periods of time, such as:

two hours' work
in ten days' time
in five minutes' time

Just as "the girls' school" is "the school of the girls", so "five minutes' time" is "a time of five minutes" or "five minutes of time".

Implied Possessives

Ordinarily the possessive construction links two nouns:

Singular: noun + apostrophe + s + noun
Plural: noun + apostrophe + noun

However, we can also use the construction without mentioning the final noun. For example:

My wife is at the hairdresser's.
We had dinner at the Smiths' last night.
After visiting St.Paul's, they went to the Inns of Court.
Let's have a burger at McDonald's.

In each of the above cases, the object of belonging is implied rather than stated.

My wife is at the hairdresser's shop.
We had dinner at the Smiths' house last night.
After visiting St. Paul's Cathedral, they went to the Inns of Court.
Let's have a burger at McDonald's Restaurant.

Historical note

As pointed out at the head of this piece, the apostrophe's most common function is to stand in for a letter that is missing in a contraction - for "o" in "isn't", for instance.

Historically, the possessive apostrophe had an identical function. In Early and Middle English many nouns in their possessive form ended in ‘es’. For example, the modern English version of Chaucer's "The Knyghtes Tale" is "The Knight's Tale". The "e" of the original possessive ending has been replaced by an apostrophe.

Here's another example from Chaucer: "Full worthi was he in his lordes werre". In modern English we would write " in his lord's war".

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Note on terminology: You will find that my, your, his, her, etc. are commonly classed as adjectives rather than as pronouns, in contrast to mine, yours, hers, ours, etc which are always called pronouns.

This is a matter for debate. For editorial purposes, however, usage is what matters rather than how words are labeled. Without going into the matter in detail, it seems to me that logic favours classifying these words as pronouns. Adjectives describe nouns and can coexist with determiners "this" and "that" and with definite or indefinite articles. But this is not the case with my, his, her, etc. You can talk about "the heavy, wooden table" but not about "the heavy, wooden, your table". In any case, "your" describes ownership of the table rather than any quality belonging to the table.

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