Holy shit! It’s singular and plural possessor apostrophes!

This is MC Grammar’s friend: J-Tube.

J-Tube is an English teacher.

J-Tube knows the difference between single and plural possessor apostrophes, but the kids in his English class do not. For example, one of them might look at a sentence like The wigs' problems and have no idea why the apostrophe is behind the s instead of in front of it. Each night, J-Tube flings himself on his bed and howls in frustration. He dreams about apostrophes that are crying out to be better understood and treated with dignity and respect, not just thrown in anywhere like so many mothballs on last year’s skinny jeans.

Last time we looked at It’s and Its. It was fun. We had some laughs. But it was only the innocent laughter of a group of fresh-faced school kids who don’t fully realise that they’re not just learning about the interesting early years of the ancient Roman Republic, they’re in for the whole fucking thing, all the way from the first expulsion of the ancient Etruscans to the final invasion of the Gauls that lead to the Dark Ages. And that is some serious timeline shit.

Anyway, now that we’ve dipped our toes in the apostrophe waters, it’s time to strip right off and plunge deeper into the grammar pool.

First up, let’s make ourselves a bowl of singular and plural possessor apostrophe cereal, eat it down and benefit from its high levels of riboflavin.

Let’s get there step by step.

Apostrophes indicate a possessive in a singular noun.

The boy’s hat.

When the possessor is a plural that does not end in an s (i.e Men, Children, Sheep) the apostrophe goes in front of the s.

The women’s movement

BUT

When the possessor does end in an end (i.e boys, wigs, tables), the apostrophe goes after the s

The babies’ bibs

So this is all fairly straight forward, but there is one final thing that you might have already noticed. What happens if you want to write something about, say, all the parents of all your friends? You can’t say ‘My friend’s parents’ because that just looks like you are referring to a single set of parents, so you have to say

My friends’ parents

An easy way to work this out is, ask yourself if something makes sense if the apostrophe is in front of the s. If you can see that it looks like you’re only referring to a singular thing, when you want to refer to many things, and you’re not lucky enough to have scored a plural word that DOESN'T end in s, then help yourself to an apostrophe AFTER the s.

This all might seem more information than you ever wanted to know – you might feel that you were happy in wading in your ignorance, and now that you’ve found out that you’ve been doing it wrong all along, you know that not only will you continue to do it wrong, but you’ll feel ashamed about it too.

Let me take this opportunity to remind you that MC Grammar loves you, and doesn’t want you to feel ashamed, just because you didn’t have a teacher like J-Tube around to fight for you and your grammar-hungry soul. And the truth of the matter is that we now have just six uses of the apostrophe left, and all of them are less used or less confusing than the ones we’ve already looked at. As far as I'm concerned, the score is almost settled against bad grammar. Justice has been served out here, and let me assure you, it tastes of your favourite ice-cream.

Knocking on the door of apostrophe-land: 'It's' and 'Its'

MC Grammar likes to keep up to date with technology. You might think that this means that naturally MC Grammar has a Facebook and Twitter account, which he can access directly from his iphone. You’d be close, but wrong. In fact. MC Grammar has decided to speed right on ahead to the next stage of keeping up-to-date and in contact with friends: by simply having a microchip inserted directly into his neck so that his every move can be followed by anyone who wants to keep tabs on him.

But the microchip has had an interesting side-effect: MC Grammar can now read minds. At first it just started as an intercepting the mass currents of status updates, but eventually refined itself so that I can hear just one, concise psychic thought at a time, and from any direction I want. It’s pretty wack.

With all that in mind, I know what you’re thinking right now. I can hear it loud and clear. You’re thinking ‘apostrophes don’t matter. People know what I’m saying anyway.’

As I said in the start of this blog, yeah, your friends on Facebook might know what you're saying, but what about everyone else? If you get lost in the apostrophe wilderness, it can mean instant humiliation among anyone you're trying to impress or persuade on paper. Strange as it may sound, that tiny little tadpole shaped sign does matter.

For example, imagine a newspaper's placard saying 'FAN'S RAGE AT STADIUM CONDITIONS'. This sounds pretty interesting until you realise they meant to say FANS', as in many fans, instead of just one fan who has completely gone mental.


The apostrophe has a lot of uses. The two main ones are:

1. To show that one or more letters have been missed out

Such as:

will not – won’t

do not – don’t

they are – they’re

it is – it’s

2. To show possession

Jane’s daffodils

Edward’s racial prejudice

Slough’s twin city in France

There will be more on apostrophes later on right now we need to deal with a law-breaker.

That’s right, there’s one word that breaks the mutherfucking rules for no obvious reason except to fuck you up, because it’s tough out there on the grammar streets. However bizarre this rule seems, there’s something to remember: there is a reason for this grammatical trickery.

The exception to the rules is the use of It’s and Its.

Use it’s only when you mean It is. For everything else, including when you are referring to something it owns, always use its.

As Lynne Truss says, ‘the rule is: the word it’s (with apostrophe) stands for it is or it has If the word does not stand for it is or it has then what you require is its.

So let’s just imagine you see a baby and you don’t know its gender and don’t care to find out. The way you would write about it is:

Its face reminded me of a wookie

Or, if you were a food critic and you were writing a review, you would say:

This was jellied eel at its best.

However, if you were just saying something ‘It is your turn’, you would just say:

It’s your turn.


The best way to remember this is by using the same system as if you were deciding on whether to use ‘your’ or ‘you’re’. If you’re saying It is, use it’s. If it’s anything else, use its.

Let’s turn to an aural aid. This week we need look no further than one of MC Hammer’s favourites, The Weather Girls, with their track, It’s Raining Men. This song wipes the floor with the newer Geri Halliwell version. Notice how the person who posted this video got it wrong and titled it 'Its Raining Men.' Remember, what they mean is It IS Raining Men, and that’s why it should read It's Raining Men. If it was anything else there would be no apostrophe. Freakishly easy, isn’t it?