I know. This topic sounds very basic. If you think it’s beneath you, just skip this tip, but I work with dozens of authors every year. You wouldn’t believe how many of them make mistakes in terms of distinguishing between the plural and the possessive.
Singular means one; plural means more than one. If you have
three kids, that’s a plural. Notice the way I spelled kids. No apostrophes
anywhere.
However, if I want to talk about the music the kids listen
to, then we’re talking about a possessive. The music belongs to the kids. We
want to insert an apostrophe. If we have one kid, let’s call her Sarah, and
we’re talking about Sarah and her music, we say, Sarah’s music. The kid’s
music. That’s because Sarah is just one person. But if we are talking about a
group of kids and their music, the apostrophe goes after the plural version of
the word kids to form this term: the kids’ music. I know, it looks wrong, but
it’s not.
Let’s look at some other examples of plurals: moms, dads,
brothers, sisters, fathers-in-law, yeses
and nos, parents, teachers, Macdonalds (if I’m sitting with my sister and
brother, we are the Macdonalds, no apostrophe anywhere).
And other possessives? The parents’ income, the dad’s golf
game, the children’s homework, the Macdonalds’ close relationships. It’s easy
to form a possessive if your noun doesn’t end in S because you simply put an
apostrophe at the end of the word and then add S. But when the word already
ends in S, writers often get confused and will put the apostrophe in the wrong
place.
Let’s re-examine the dad’s golf game. I was talking about
one dad. Singular. If I had been talking about a group of dads, I would’ve said
the dads’ golf game. Sounds the same (it’s a homonym), but be careful about the
placement of that apostrophe. And if you make a mistake, it’s always a good
idea to spellcheck your document because spellcheck will probably pick this up. Not all the time, but often enough; however, my spellcheck tells me that my spelling of Macdonalds as a plural is wrong, so I just ignored it. Spellcheck is
not always right.
Happy writing.
SM
