Five nurse's or nurses' ?

[Deepurple]

Which one is correct:

There are five nurse's/nurses' husbands at the party.

Thanks for helping.

 

[dkth1nh]

nurses' husband :d

 

[xpert]

There are five nurses' husbands at the party. :tick:

 

[Deepurple]

There are five nurses' husbands at the party. :tick:

But some people said that both are acceptable. I just wonder the reason why.:-(

 

[RonBee]

The word "five" tells us the plural should be used. You can't have five nurse. So it should be five nurses's husbands.

 

[xpert]

Grammatically speaking, the apostrophe is usually placed after s' if the noun is plural. Examples,

Plural - students' books = books for many students
Singular - student's books = books for one student

Notice: When the noun is a normal plural, with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive; so pens' caps (where there is more than one pen) is correct rather than pens's caps.

 

[thod00]

How about if you wanted to indicate the house jointly owned by Mr & Mrs Mills? Indicate both plurality and possession.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

But some people said that both are acceptable. I just wonder the reason why.:-(

They're wrong. Always remember that most native English speakers don't speak or write standard English.

The plural of nurse is nurses.

When it's singular, add 's: the nurse's husband.

When it's plural, putting the apostrophe after the s keeps the plural s attached to nurse, where it belongs.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

How about if you wanted to indicate the house jointly owned by Mr & Mrs Mills? Indicate both plurality and possession.

In your case, it's Mr. and Mrs. Mills' house.

(Also acceptable, at least in the U.S., when the possessive 's is actually pronounced: Mr. and Mrs. Mills's house.)

If Ruth and Harry Mills share a house, it's Ruth and Harry's house.

If Ruth and Harry Mills live in different houses, they're Ruth's and Harry's houses.

 

[tareq10]

Grammatically speaking, the apostrophe is usually placed after s' if the noun is plural. Examples,

Plural - students' books = books for many students
Singular - student's books = books for one student

Notice: When the noun is a normal plural, with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive; so pens' caps (where there is more than one pen) is correct rather than pens's caps.

You're definitely right! :up:

And when there is a proper-noun ends in an 's', we add only an apostrophe.

E.g: Carlos' gift. but not Carlos's gift. ;-)

 

[RonBee]

And when there is a proper-noun ends in an 's', we add only an apostrophe.

E.g: Carlos' gift. but not Carlos's gift. ;-)

Frequently, in AmE we do add the 's. It's optional. (Either way is OK.)

 

[thod00]

In your case, it's Mr. and Mrs. Mills' house.

Bah, thats easy. I was hoping to generate confusion by asking for the plural too. The Mills' House only indicates someone called Mills and says nothing about how many Mills there are.

An easy way is to change the spelling to the phonetic version. "Keeping up with the Joneses" for example. Of course that would give us "The Millses' House" in the original question or possibly "Mills'es"