Possessive Nouns

Possessive nouns show that something belongs to another person or thing. We typically add an apostrophe followed by an ‘s’ to singular nouns and only an apostrophe to plural nouns. Here are some examples of possessive nouns:

• the chair’s legs (one chair)
• the chairs’ legs (two or more chairs)

In this instance the number of chairs does not matter, the apostrophe is dictated by the possessor (who owns it, in this case the chair) and not the possessed (in what is owned, in this case the legs). See another example below:

	one orange	more than one orange
one student	the student’s orange	the student’s oranges
more than one student	the students’ orange	the students’ oranges

The structure can be used for a whole phrase:

• the dog collar’s size (the size of the collar of the dog)
• the President’s daughter’s phone (the phone of the daughter of the president)

One would think that of is enough to show possession, but in reality it is more common to use ‘s to show possession. This can be confusing for Spanish speakers since of is commonly used in their language. Below you will see two phrases that are both correct, but the second one is more common:

1. the sister of his neighbor
2. his neighbor’s sister

Proper Nouns (Names)

Possessive is regularly used with proper nouns, such as names, as illustrated below:

• Hold John’s phone.
• Find Sally’s purse.
• Do you like Jaime’s new haircut?
• Is that Harold’s gift?

If a person ends with an s we still use the ‘s to indicate possession. It follows the rules for other singular nouns:

• Search for Louis’s car.

Irregular Plurals

For nouns that have irregular plurals (those that form a plural without adding an s) we treat them as singular noun by adding ‘s to create the possessive.

singular noun	plural noun
the child’s	the children’s
the person’s	the people’s
the woman’s right	the women’s right
the foot’s size	the feet’s size
The tooth’s decay	The teeth’s decay

[slickquiz id=7]