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Recipe

Decide where (or whether) an apostrophe belongs

Use when: you're looking at a word that might need an apostrophe -- a possible possessive, a possible contraction, or just a plain plural -- and need to know if an apostrophe belongs at all, and where

Goal: the correctly placed apostrophe, or the confident decision that none belongs, backed by which of the three jobs the word is doing

Taught in Contractions, and Its vs. It's

Quick recipe

  1. Decide what job the word is doing -- ownership, a missing letter, or neither
  2. For possession, check whether the owner is a pronoun, then singular or plural
  3. For a contraction, find which letters are missing
  1. 1

    Ask what the word is doing in the sentence. Is it showing that one thing belongs to or is closely tied to another? Is it standing in for two words squeezed into one, with a letter or letters dropped? Or is it simply naming more than one of something, with no ownership and no missing letters involved?

    Example

    The dogs ran. Just naming more than one dog -- no ownership, no missing letters. No apostrophe: dogs, not dog's. The dog's bone. Ownership -- the bone belongs to the dog. Apostrophe needed.

    • it's showing ownership — go to Step 2.
    • it's standing in for two squeezed-together words — go to Step 3.
    • it's just a plain plural, more than one of something, nothing owned and nothing contracted — no apostrophe belongs anywhere in the word; stop here.

    Why: the single most common apostrophe error is adding one to a plain plural that was never showing ownership or standing in for anything -- asking this question first heads that off before placement even comes up.

  2. 2

    If Step 1 sent you here, first check whether the word is a possessive form of a personal pronoun (his, her, its, our, their, hers, ours, yours, theirs) or whose, rather than a noun.

    Example

    Its bone was buried in the yard. Its is a possessive pronoun -- no apostrophe. The dog's bone. Singular owner -- 's. The dogs' bones. Plural owner already ending in -s -- apostrophe only. The children's toys. Irregular plural, no -s to hang an apostrophe off of -- 's, built the same way as a singular.

    • the word is a personal pronoun's possessive form or whose — no apostrophe; his, her, its, whose, and the rest already carry their own possessive spelling. (Indefinite pronouns such as someone do take 's.)
    • the owner is a singular noun (including one already ending in s) — add 's: the dog's bone, the boss's office.
    • the owner is a plural noun that already ends in -s — add only an apostrophe after the s that's already there: the dogs' bones.
    • the owner is an irregular plural that does NOT end in -s (children, people, men, women) — add 's, the same as a singular noun: the children's toys.

    ⚡ Shortcut

    Mentally swap in "belonging to it/them," and if the owner-word already ends in s before it became possessive, the apostrophe goes after that s and nothing more follows. If it doesn't already end in s (a singular, or an irregular plural like children), add the full 's.

    Why: a possessive pronoun already is a possessive form. An apostrophe on top of one doesn't mark ownership more strongly -- it just misspells a word that was never borrowing the noun-possessive system to begin with. Plural possessive placement depends entirely on the plural's own spelling, not on how many owners there are.

  3. 3

    If Step 1 sent you here instead, say the two full words the contraction is built from, and notice which letters disappear. The apostrophe goes where those letters used to sit.

    Example

    Should've is should have with ha dropped -- the apostrophe marks that gap. Should of is never correct; of is a preposition and can't follow should in this construction.

    • the words contract cleanly and the apostrophe marks a real gap (*do not — don't*, they will -> they'll) -> write the apostrophe at that gap.
    • the word sounds like "should of," "would of," or "could of" — that's a misheard version of should've/would've/could've (should have, would have, could have); the missing word is always have, never of.

    Why: should of sounds identical to should've when spoken quickly, but the two spellings come from different words. Expanding the contraction back out is the only way to catch this one by ear.

Common mistakes

  • Adding an apostrophe to a plain plural that shows neither ownership nor a contraction (writing dog's to mean more than one dog).
  • Adding an apostrophe to a personal pronoun's possessive form (it's, her's, their's) -- none of his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs (or my, your, her, our, their) takes one.
  • Adding a second s to a plural that already ends in one (the dogs's bones instead of the dogs' bones).
  • Writing should of, would of, or could of instead of the contraction of have.
  • Confusing it's (always "it is" or "it has") with its (always the possessive pronoun) -- they are two different words that happen to sound alike, never two spellings of one word.