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Confusing Possessives

Example: Mother’s Day vs. Mothers’ Day vs. Mothers Day

With titles, you may think of the word in front of the noun as either singular, plural, or possessive. For example, do you think of the holiday as belonging to each mother individually (Mother’s Day) or to all mothers collectively (Mothers’ Day)? Or do you think of the word Mothers as an adjective describing Day? There is no right or wrong answer to this question.

The same holds true for other holidays.

Examples:
Secretary’s Day vs. Secretaries Day vs. Secretaries’ Day
Boss’s Day vs. Bosses Day vs. Bosses’ Day

Do you think of each secretary or boss “owning” the day individually (Secretary’s Day/Boss’s Day), as a group “owning” the day (Secretaries’ Day/Bosses’ Day), or as a plural adjective (Secretaries Day/Bosses Day)? Again, there is no right or wrong answer.

The Chicago Manual of Style lists the following holidays as singular possessives: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. Plural possessive is used for Presidents’ Day.

Your guess is as good as anyone’s about Secretary’s vs. Secretaries’ vs. Secretaries Day and Boss’s vs. Bosses’ vs. Bosses Day.

What would you do if we had a Children’s Day holiday? Because Children is an irregular plural (not formed by adding an s or es), you would have to use the apostrophe in the title because there is no such word as Childrens.

Example: Children’s Hospital

Posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 7:00 pm