You and your familys loss grammar

How do you form the second person possessive? For instance, if someone drops a belonging in a crowded area, you might pick it up and ask him or her,

• Is this yours?
• Is this your’s?

Now, you need to ask yourself, which of the above spellings is correct, yours or your’s? This isn’t much of an issue in speech because both would sound the same when spoken, but one spelling is correct and one is definitely wrong.

What is the Difference Between Yours and Your’s?

If you don’t know which of these spellings is correct, don’t worry. I’ll cover everything you need to know about yours vs. your’s in this post.

The short answer is that yours is always and unequivocally the correct choice. You should never use your’s in your sentences.

I’ll explain in more detail below.

When to Use Yours

• You can stay here or come with us; the choice is yours.
• The future of television (according to Apple) can be yours starting Friday when a revamped Apple TV begins hitting stores. –USA Today
• Assuming that yours is a family where facts matter, The Fix is on the case. We checked in with three political historians to see what brainy insights they could share. –The Washington Post

When you are indicating possession, yours is the correct choice—not your’s. You do not need an apostrophe to indicate possession because yours itself is a possessive pronoun.

In this sense, yours is similar to other possessive pronouns like its, whose, and ours. None of these words requires an apostrophe since they are already possessive.

When to Use Your’s

Your’s is an incorrect formation of the second person possessive pronoun. There is no reason to use it in your sentences.

Why is There Confusion: Yours vs. Your’s?

To make most words possessive in English, you add an apostrophe.

• The boy’s pencil.
• The girl’s dress.

Wouldn’t it, therefore, make sense to add an ‘s to your to make is possessive? Not exactly.

Pronouns have their own possessive forms, as I mentioned above: its, ours, whose, etc. These help the reader understand you more clearly because if you added an ‘s to its, it is not clear whether you mean its as a possessive or it’s as a contraction.

The separate forms solve this problem.

Trick to Remember the Difference

Here’s an easy trick to remember your’s vs. yours.

The first and easiest trick to keep track of these words is to completely eliminate your’s from your vocabulary. There is no use for this spelling, and it serves no purpose—other than to confuse people.

If, for whatever reason, you do find yourself torn between your’s and yours, just spell out your’s as if it were a contraction.

• Is this suitcase yours?
• Is this suitcase your’s?
• Is this suitcase your is?

As you can clearly see, your’s makes no sense in this sentence. Yours is the correct choice and is always the correct choice.

For example, there is no direct correlation or causal relationship between the fact that fewer men smoke and the fact that the number of women smokers is rising. However, a direct correlation exists between the fact that smoking is bad for people, but people continue to smoke anyway.

The English language can be confusing. Some words might sound the same, while they are spelled differently, and some words are spelled the same and yet have different meanings.

If you are confused about how to pluralize the word “family,” or whether or not you should add an apostrophe, you aren’t alone.  

The word families is plural, denoting more than one family. The word family’s — with an apostrophe and added “s” — is singular and shows possession. Therefore, the difference between families and family’s lies in understanding possession versus pluralization. Possessive nouns show that something belongs to a person, place, or thing. Plural nouns simply mean that there is more than one.  

We’ll go through the basics behind each spelling, as well as when and how to use both correctly so that, by the time you finish reading, you’ll be an expert too.

Understanding Pluralization Versus Possession 

The most confusing part about understanding the difference between possessive nouns and plural nouns is that, with each, you’ll often find an added “s” at the end of the word. But, in both cases, the “s” means something different.  

Let’s look at an example. Below, three sentences are using different versions of the same word:  

1.     My family is going to the beach this summer.

2.     Many families are going to the beach this summer.   

3.     My family’s bags are packed! 

In these sentences, there are three different spellings for the noun, family.  

Remember that nouns are people, places, things, and even ideas (source). And nouns can be singular (meaning one), plural (meaning more than one), or they can show possession or ownership, meaning that something belongs to the person, place, or thing.  

The word family, with no added “s” or apostrophe, simply means that we are talking about one family. In sentence number one above — my family is going to the beach this summer — one family is going to the beach.  

And, the good news is that if you are only talking about one family, this is the spelling you will always use.  

Things get tricky when we start changing the spelling to be plural or possessive.

Take a look at the second sentence, “Many families are going to the beach this summer.”  The spelling is a bit different, and there is no apostrophe added to the word. You might be asking yourself why.

The reason is that we are simply talking about more than one family doing something, not owning or possessing something. Let’s first look at how we make words plural.

Making Nouns Plural

Again, the word plural means “more than one.”  Often, when you have more than one person, place, or idea, you want to communicate that in your writing, and you do so by changing the form or spelling of the word.  

For most nouns, we can simply add an “s” to show that there is more than one (source).  

Unfortunately, though, for many nouns, including the noun family, you also have to change the spelling of the word. It all depends on the letter at the end of the word. It’s a bit of memorization and practice, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you get the hang of it.  

Below are some of the basic rules you’ll want to follow to show that you have more than one of something. But in each of these instances, you have to do more than simply add an “s” to the end of the word:

A great idea is to keep a guide handy that will help you identify the different rules of pluralization as you begin practicing, especially with some tricky words and spellings, such as musical terms.  

The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology and Dreyer’s English style guide are great additions to your library and will help you with new words, style, and spelling. You can easily find both on Amazon.

There are more rules than in the list above, but we’ll stick to those few basics so that we can focus specifically on the word we are working on: “families.”  

You’ll notice that the noun family ends with a “y,” so to show that there is more than one, simply change the “y” to an “i” and then add an “es” (source). The word families shows that there is more than one family.

In this case, nothing belongs to these families, so we are not going to add an apostrophe. We only add apostrophes to show that the noun is in possession of something.  Let’s take a look at why, next.

Showing Possession

Showing possession in writing is a way to communicate that something belongs to someone or something (source). In English, we do that with a little character called an apostrophe. It looks a lot like a comma, but it’s in a different spot.  

You can show ownership for both singular and plural nouns; the difference is all in the spelling and where, precisely, you will need to put that apostrophe. Let’s start with singular nouns since those are a bit easier.  

Let’s say that you want to show that something belongs to your family and your family only. Here is an example sentence:

1.     She threw my family’s baseball back to us when we accidentally lost it in her yard.  

Here, we are talking about one family. When you are dealing with a singular noun, and you want to show ownership, you will first add an apostrophe to the end of the word, and then an “s.” Let’s look at another example.

2.     My family’s beach ball was red, yellow, blue, and orange.  

Here, again, we are talking about something that belongs to one family, so we simply add an apostrophe first, and then an “s” to show that the beach ball belongs to one family.  We don’t have to change the spelling of family at all — we just add to it.  

But what if you wanted to show that something belonged to more than one family?  If you are scratching your head wondering what to do, that is okay!  Let’s take a look — here is an example sentence:

1.     The families’ pets were all playing together at the dog park.

You’ll notice here that we are talking about more than one pet with the plural noun, pets.  And, we wanted to show that the pets belonged to more than one family, too.  

So, you’ll see first that the plural form of the word family is used — families. However, do you notice anything different about the apostrophe? 

If you said it is in a different spot, you are absolutely right. Instead of being placed on the inside of the “s,” we placed it on the outside. Below is a pretty simple rule to remember when showing possession for plural nouns like families:

If you look at the first example sentence in the box above, the balls belong to more than one boy. I know this because the apostrophe is after the “s.”  If the ball belonged to only one boy, it would look like this: boy’s.  

The word babies is a lot like the word families. The singular form ends in y (baby).  So, to make it plural, we change the “y” to an “i” and add “es.”  Then, to show possession,  we add an apostrophe to the end of the word to get babies’. 

To learn more about how to show possession with singular and plural nouns, take a look at “People’s or Peoples’: Understanding the Differences Between the Two Terms.”  

Families or Family’s: Summing It All Up

All of these rules can definitely get confusing. Learning them takes practice, so don’t get discouraged.

To review, below are the main differences between the singular and plural form for the word “family,” and the singular and plural possessive form of the same word.  

Final Thoughts

Remember, mastering grammar in the English language can be pretty tricky. It takes time and practice. 

But, be sure to keep resources in your library like those mentioned above — The Oxford English Dictionary and Dryer’s English — they’ll help you as you begin to learn even more about different spellings and their meanings.  

Is it your family's loss or your families loss?

Is it correct to say you and your family?

Is it your family's or your families?

Is it families or families's?