by Chris Pearce

Created on: November 15, 2011   Last Updated: May 07, 2012

Nouns are one of eight classes of words, or parts of speech, in the English language. Broadly, a noun is the name of a person, place or thing, or it can be an abstract notion such as “information” or “wish”. When we want to indicate possession or ownership of something, we use an apostrophe, such as in Mary’s house or the book’s cover. The first noun in these cases is the possessive noun.

For singular common nouns, an apostrophe and an “s” is added to the noun to make it a possessive noun. Examples include the carpenter’s toolbox, the cat’s basket, the river’s water quality, the scarf’s colors, the government’s policies, the town’s population and for argument’s sake. If a noun already ends in “s”, an apostrophe s is usually added just the same, such as the boss’s office and the atlas’s index.

Plural nouns simply take an apostrophe at the end of the word without adding an “s”, to make them possessive. Examples include the judges’ comments, the nurses’ uniforms and the governments’ budgets. Where a plural noun doesn’t end in “s”, an apostrophe and an “s” are added to these words to make them possessive, such as children’s toys, people’s preference and mice’s nests.

For personal names, an apostrophe and an “s” are added, as in Frank’s articles, Janet’s husband, Paul’s sister and Fido’s bone. A problem arises where the name ends in “s”. There are no hard and fast rules, and usage varies. Some people prefer James’s car while others like James’ car. Similarly, with a two-syllable name ending in “s”, such as Dickens, we can use either Dickens’ novels or Dickens’s novels. When it comes to Francis’ car versus Francis’s car, the preference might be for the former, as the latter has a lot of “s” sounds together. For this reason, we would probably say or write Francis’ scooter rather than Francis’s scooter. Thus possible rules are to always add just an apostrophe, or to only do this when the noun is more than one syllable, or when it has two successive “s” sounds at end, or always add an apostrophe and an “s”.

With the names of institutions and placenames, the move seems to be away from treating these nouns as possessive, although this varies

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