Using possessive apostrophes

In a nutshell

Possessive apostrophes are used to show that something belongs to something or someone. An apostrophe is a punctuation mark that looks like this: ('). In this summary, you will learn the rules for how to use a possessive apostrophe and the possessive 's'.

Add apostrophe and 's' if the word does not end in 's'

If the word does not end in 's', you can simply add an apostrophe and 's' to show possession.

Example

word before possession	word + apostrophe + s
Ahmed	Ahmed's car
cat	The cat's food
mother	My mother's flowers

Add apostrophe after the 's' if a word does end in 's'

If the word already ends in 's', then just add apostrophe after the 's' to show possession. Also included in this rule are plural words that already end in 's'.

Example

word before possession	word + apostrophe after the 's'
girls (plural)	The girls' team won.
Mr Smiths	That is Mr Smiths' coffee.
Bus	The bus' wheel kept turning round and round.
cats (plural)	The cats' meows were very loud.