When is a word possessive

Gerard's is a possessive word. The apostrophe and the S at the end of Gerard's tells people the house belongs to Gerard. You probably know that instead of saying Gerard's house you could say his house. Words like his , her , our , their , and your tell you who something belongs to, but they don't get an apostrophe. They don't even get an apostrophe if they end in S, like his , hers , ours , yours , or theirs. Let's go back to the monkey's office. You know the apostrophe and the S mean the office belongs to the monkey.

Actually, both ways are correct. If a proper name ends with an s, you can add just the apostrophe or an apostrophe and an s. See the examples below for an illustration of this type of possessive noun. But when you have a plural noun that ends in s, add just the apostrophe.

When you have an ordinary noun like student , you can tell whether the possessive form refers to one student or many students by looking at where the apostrophe is. Since the s, the Thomases, both of whom have multiple PhDs, have sold old books and magazines at the fair on Saturdays and Sundays.

The rare exception to the rule is when certain abbreviations, letters, or words are used as nouns, as in the following examples. Unless the apostrophe is needed to avoid misreading or confusion, omit it. For this last example, the trend is to instead write yeses and noes. The final class of exceptions is pronouns. Note the following: He lost his book. Which seats are ours? The bull lowered its head. Whose are these spectacles? Note in particular the spelling of possessive its.