Learn English - English Speaking Tutorial

To Demonstrate Possession

When a noun is said to possess something, the noun needs to be given an apostrophe.

Example: The dog’s bone is brown.

A good way to determine if the noun needs to be possessive, is to turn the phrase around and add “of the”.

Example: The bone of the dog is brown.

So let’s look at a sentence with an “of” phrase. Can you see how to turn it into a possessive?

Example: The stomach of Mike doesn’t feel well.

The correct way to turn this into a possessive is:

Mike’s stomach doesn’t feel well.

Now that we know when to add an apostrophe, it is important to talk about how to add an apostrophe. In almost all cases, ‘s should be added to make the subject possessive. However, one exception is when the noun is plural and ends in an -s. In this case, do not add an apostrophe as well as an -s, simply add just the apostrophe.

Example: Those horses’ trailer is old.

Another example: The four friends’ dishes were identical.

Some people are tricked when adding an apostrophe to a singular noun that ends in -s. It is important to note that not all nouns that end in -s simply receive an apostrophe. Singular nouns that end in -s receive ’s.

Example: Chris’s hat is blue.

Contractions

Perhaps the most common use for apostrophes is to indicate the omission of letters when a contraction is being used. Using an apostrophe in this manner is relatively simple. Here are some examples:

Let us = Let’s

Do not = Don’t

Need not = Needn’t

Should not = Shouldn’t

1940 = ‘40

She will = She’ll

In written language, contractions aren’t terribly efficient. In other words, it takes about an equal amount of time to write “let us” as it does “let’s”. However, contracts are very efficient in spoken language. Often they serve as a way of reducing two words each with one syllable into one, one syllable word.

No Apostrophes For Pronouns

Since possessive pronouns already indicate possession, one needn’t use an apostrophe with them. The most commonly used possessive pronouns are its, my, his, her, yours, and ours.

Incorrect: There is something on his’ face.

Correct: There is something on his face.

Incorrect: The leaf fell from it’s branch.

Correct: The leaf fell from its branch.

The possessive pronoun its can give people a lot of trouble. Since the same word is used as a contraction for “it is”, it can be easy to add an apostrophe to the possessive pronoun its. It is only correct to do this when contracting the words “it is” to spell “it’s”.