Learning regular and irregular plural forms is one thing, but learning the possessive form for each type can cause some pretty big headaches for our students! In one of our Functional English lessons, Finding the Restroom, students will see men's room but they might wonder why it isn't spelled mens' room.

Our publishing team recently discussed how tricky it is for students to learn how to spell men’s room and ladies’ room. Why don’t we spell it mens’ room? And how can we help our English language learners learn possessive plurals?

The answer lies in thinking about the plural form before it becomes possessive. The plural of man is men, so the possessive follows the normal rule of adding an apostrophe + s to form men’s room. The plural of lady is ladies, so the possessive follows the normal rule of adding only the apostrophe to a plural word ending in ‑s, which gives us ladies’ room (scroll down for the complete list of rules).

Let’s take a look at some other common English plurals and possessive forms in the table below.

Regular & Irregular Possessive Plural Forms

Regular Plurals
Singular	Possessive Singular	Plural	Possessive Plural
lady	lady’s	ladies	ladies’
guy	guy’s	guys	guys’
girl	girl’s	girls	girls’
boy	boy’s	boys	boys’
kid	kid’s	kids	kids’
student	student’s	students	students’
teacher	teacher’s	teachers	teachers’
school	school’s	schools	schools’
book	book’s	books	books’

Irregular Plurals
Singular	Possessive Singular	Plural	Possessive Plural
man	man’s	men	men’s
woman	woman’s	women	women’s
child	child’s	children	children’s
person	person’s	people	people’s
baby	baby’s	babies	babies’
wife	wife’s	wives	wives’
foot	foot’s	feet	feet’s
tomato	tomato’s	tomatoes	tomatoes’
class*	class’s	classes	classes’

Summary of Rules

Rule #1

For singular and plural nouns that don’t end in ‑s: noun + ’s

• boy + ’s = boy’s
• men + ’s = men’s

Rule #2

For singular nouns ending in ‑s: noun + ’s

• class + ’s = class’s

Rule #3

For plural nouns ending in ‑s: nouns + ’

• ladies + ’ = ladies’

Examples

• Excuse me, do you know where the men’s room is?
• The ladies’ room is down the hall to the right.
• Jimmy, do you need to use the little boys’ room?
• My cousins and I always have to sit at the kids’ table.
• Where are the children’s books in this store?
• My class’s poem won first place. It beat the other classes’ submissions.

Related

• Finding the Restroom
• Forming the Possessive of Words Ending in ‑s
• Olympics: Singular or Plural?
• There Is/There Are + Nouns in a Series
• Count & Non-Count Nouns