Other forms such as “our’s,”“your’s,”“her’s,” and “their’s” simply aren’t real words. Apostrophe “s” as a contraction of “is” or “has” archaic Greek Sigma could be written with different numbers of angles and strokes. Besides the classical form with four strokes ( ), a three-stroke form resembling an angular Latin S ( ) was commonly found, and was particularly characteristic of some mainland Greek varieties including Attic and several "red" alphabets. S" Is for Silence, the nineteenth novel in Sue Grafton's "Alphabet mystery" series, published in 2005 In most Western orthographies, the ſ gradually fell out of use during the second half of the 18th century, although it remained in occasional use into the 19th century.

Unlike possessive nouns, possessive pronouns do not contain apostrophes. The possessive pronouns are mine, ours, yours, his, hers, its, theirs, and whose. The minuscule form ſ, called the long s, developed in the early medieval period, within the Visigothic and Carolingian hands, with predecessors in the half-uncial and cursive scripts of Late Antiquity. It remained standard in western writing throughout the medieval period and was adopted in early printing with movable types.In this case, the result of just adding an “s” without any punctuation can often be mistaken for another word (e.g., “is”) or simply look wrong (e.g., “ss”). So it’s standard to add an apostrophe in this context. Example: Apostrophe “s” to pluralize lowercase lettersThere are five s’s and two e’s in “assesses.” Subscript small s was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902 [14] S, a non-SI unit used to designate molecule size named after the Svedberg sedimentation coefficient People are particularly likely to believe an apostrophe is needed when pluralizing nouns ending in vowel sounds (e.g., “frisbee’s”), numbers or decades (e.g., “1980’s”), surnames (e.g., “Jones’s”), or acronyms (e.g., “TV’s”), but the apostrophe is wrong in all of these contexts. The correct forms are “frisbees,”“1980s,”“Joneses,” and “TVs.” Exception: Pluralizing letters West, Andrew; Chan, Eiso; Everson, Michael (2017-01-16). "L2/17-013: Proposal to encode three uppercase Latin letters used in early Pinyin" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-12-26 . Retrieved 2019-03-08.

The Western Greek alphabet used in Cumae was adopted by the Etruscans and Latins in the 7th century BC, over the following centuries developing into a range of Old Italic alphabets including the Etruscan alphabet and the early Latin alphabet.Long s (ſ), a form of the lower-case letter s formerly used where "s" occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word It would be simpler, of course, if there were only one form in use, and there's an argument to be made for using it's in all cases; 's serves both purposes just fine for nouns. In the cat's bowl it signals possession, and in the cat's sleeping it represents the contracted verb is.

There is one context in which style guides do advise adding an apostrophe for a plural. This is when you’re pluralizing an individual letter. Some style guides instead advise italicizing the letter (but not the following “s”): “two es.” Worksheet: Possessive apostrophe The letter ⟨s⟩ is the seventh most common letter in English and the third-most common consonant after ⟨t⟩ and ⟨n⟩. [7] It is the most common letter for the first letter of a word in the English language. [8] [9] Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11 . Retrieved 2018-03-24. Plural nouns that end in “s” (most plural nouns) form the possessive with an apostrophe after the “s,” without adding a second “s.”In almost all cases, you should not add an apostrophe before the “s” when you’re simply pluralizing a noun. For example, the plural of “mango” is “mangos,” not “mango’s.” Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11 . Retrieved 2018-03-24. An exception is usually made in expressions like “for goodness’ sake.” Here, the “s” is left out (even though “goodness” is singular) to avoid having an awkward series of “s” sounds in one place. Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11 . Retrieved 2018-03-24.