Apostrophe’s Rules

 

 

Apostrophe’s denoting possessive case should be used in the following cases.

1.       It is used with living things. For example, man’s work, people’s protest, Ram’s captaincy.

2.       It is used when a non living thing is treated as a living thing (personification). For example, fortune’s wheel, fate’s web

3.       It is used with space of time. For example, month’s leave, day’s journey

4.       It is used for dignified things. For example, court’s order; church’s rules

5.       We make use of only apostrophe (‘) and not ‘S’ with plural nouns ending in ‘s’. For example boys’ game, ladies’ hostel.

6.       Apostrophe ‘s’ should not be put after possessive pronouns like his, her, its, their, your, mine, our. But we can put’s without apostrophe with some of them. For example

We can use hers, theirs, yours, ours, these mean belonging to her, belonging to them, belonging to you etc.

7.       In the case of compound words or titles made of several words the apostrophe ‘s’ is put after the last word only. For example,

Father-in-law’s house.

Commander-in-chief’s bungalow.

8.       When two nouns are joined with and we put apostrophe ‘s’ with each if we want to denote the possession of both and with the second only if we denote joint possession. For Example,

Ram and Shyam’s houses (Houses belonging to both)

Ram’s and Shyam’s house (two houses belonging to two persons)

9.       Double possessive, should not be used. For example,

Incorrect      My daughter’s mother-in-law’s necklace is lost.

Correct         The necklace of the mother-in-law of my daughter is lost.

10.   Study the following two sentences. The writer’s book is with me

The book of this writer is with me.

The first sentence means ‘the book which is owned by the writer. The second sentence means ‘the book written by this writer’. So apostrophe’s’ and ‘of’ should not be used in each other place.

11.   Apostrophe ‘s’ is put after else in the case of somebody else, everybody else, anyone else etc.

12.   ‘Cousin’ is never followed by ‘brother’ or ‘sister’

13.   ‘Signature’ should be used in place of the abbreviation ‘sign’.

14.   ‘Vacation’s is one term. Hence it is singular.

15.   ‘English teacher’s is a slang. It should be ‘the teacher of English’.

16.   ‘Nouns’ or ‘Pronoun’ after one of should always be plural.

17.   ‘Room’ in a compartment or on a bench, etc. means unoccupied seat.’