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You can use apostrophes in two main ways — to indicate a contraction or to show ownership.
(Although please note that proper nouns, such as Methodist Ladies’ College, retain their own apostrophes.)
Contractions
Use an apostrophe to replace omitted letters in a word.
don’t
couldn’t
cont’d
Ownership
Use an apostrophe to indicate that a noun owns something.
Singular nouns take an’s, even if the noun ends with s.
David’s performance
Lynne Truss’s book
Plural and collective nouns not ending in s also take an ’s.
children’s playtime
the fish’s offspring
Plural nouns that end with s have an apostrophe added after the s.
the students’ work
the lecturers’ seminars
If the ‘possessive’ belongs to more than one person, only add an apostrophe to the last person in the grouping.
Smith and Maynard’s book about Bob Brown
Unless Smith and Maynard have written separate books, in which case it would read:
Smith’s and Maynard’s books about Bob Brown
Note that both ‘bachelor’s degree’ and ‘master’s degree’, when used in a generic sense, require an apostrophe.
While some dislike this convention, it is prescribed by the Macquarie Dictionary (the Australian standard) and the Oxford English Dictionary (the UK standard), and aligns with our key institutional partner Warwick University. Currently you will find the terms used both with and without an apostrophe throughout our online and print publications — gradually, we need to move toward correct usage.
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