Possessive apostrophes indicate ownership. Typically, this will involve adding an apostrophe plus the letter ‘s’ after a noun or someone’s name:
Mandy's hair was tangled.
The table’s leg is wobbly.
Here, for example, the apostrophes show us that the hair belongs to Mandy and that the leg belongs to the table.
The main variation on the rule above comes when a word already ends in the letter ‘s’. In this case, you can either:
Add an apostrophe plus another ‘s’ (e.g. Denis’s tennis racquet)
Or just use the apostrophe by itself (e.g. Denis’ tennis racquet)
Both of these are accepted in modern English. However, if you’re writing an essay or for a specific publication, you may want to check your style guide for advice on which approach to use.
Plurals that end in ‘s’ sometimes cause confusion when using a possessive apostrophe. The key here is that possessive apostrophes should always go after the final ‘s’ in a plural. For instance, imagine if we wanted to talk about two dogs with empty food bowls:
The dogs’ bowls are empty. ✓
The dog’s bowls are empty. ✗
The first sentence here suggests multiple dogs and multiple bowls. But the second implies one dog with more than one bowl. And while this not ungrammatical, it is still an error as it does not say what it is meant to say.
It is important to know which words to capitalise in your writing. Here's a list of the types of words that we need to capitalise in English.
1. Use a capital letter for the personal pronoun 'I':
What can I say?
2. Use a capital letter to begin a sentence or to begin speech:
The man arrived. He sat down.
Suddenly Mary asked, "What's for dinner?"
3. Use capital letters for many abbreviations and acronyms:
G.M.T. or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)
N.A.T.O. or NATO or Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
4. Use a capital letter for days of the week, months of the year, holidays:
Thursday, Friday
March, April
Easter
Anzac Day
5. Use a capital letter for countries, languages & nationalities, religions:
Thailand, Canada
Cantonese, English
Christianity, Islam
6. Use a capital letter for people's names and titles:
William, Theo, Robert Redford
Professor Mason, Dr Jones
Captain Kirk, Queen Elizabeth II
7. Use a capital letter for trade-marks and names of companies and other organisations:
Coca-Cola, Walmart
Google, Hyundai
the United Nations, the Red Cross
8. Use a capital letter for places and monuments:
Sydney, Bangkok, Circular Quay
the Statue of Liberty, Westminster Abbey
Buckingham Palace, the White House
Oxford Street, Madison Square
Uranus, Mars, Sirius
South America, the Middle East, the South Pole
9. Use a capital letter for names of vehicles like ships, trains and spacecraft:
the Titanic
the Orient Express, the Ghan
Challenger 2, the Enterprise
10. Use a capital letter for titles of books, poems, songs, plays, films etc:
War And Peace
Moon River
Hamilton
Frozen, Gone With The Wind
11. Use capital letters (sometimes!) for headings, titles of articles, books etc, and newspaper headlines:
HOW TO MAKE A MILLION
Chapter 2: THE DEMISE OF CLINTON
LIFE FOUND ON MARS!
MAN BITES DOG