Possessive Singular Nouns
Channel: Grammar God
Date: 2022-03-16

Join our English Grammar journey, as we go over Possessive Singular Nouns, what they are, how to form them, common errors and misconceptions! Unlock your potential by becoming a Grammar God one step at a time!

Time Stamps:
00:00 What are Nouns?
00:10 What are Singular Nouns?
00:20 Singular vs Plural Nouns
00:33 Apostrophes make Possessive Singular Nouns
01:06 Common Errors - Final Letter
01:22 Common Errors - its vs it's
01:39 Why is "it" inconsistent? - Next Video

Transcript:

Nouns are an English language word group, containing every word for objects, people, places, animals, qualities, ideas, and actions. Singular Nouns are a subsection of this word group, limited to the words that represent a single object, person, place, animal, quality, idea, or action. For example, runner vs runners, and mental-state vs mental states. In both cases, the former is a Singular Noun, whilst the latter is an example of a Plural Noun - not covered in this video.
Possessive Singular Nouns are a modification of the Singular Noun word group, adding an apostrophe s to the end of each word to indicate the Noun possesses another part of the sentence.

For example, if I wanted to show John owns a football, I would write: “John’s football”, the apostrophe s makes this sentence equivalent to “the football of John”. Without the apostrophe s, this sentence would read “John football”, which sounds like a strange name, instead of one of John’s possessions.

Now you know the basics, watch out for these two common errors. When forming the possessive of a Singular Noun, remember the Noun’s final letter is not important. Charles becomes Charles’s, University becomes University’s, and love becomes love’s.

Concerning its and it’s. Never use it’s to indicate an “it” owns something. “It’s bone”, translates directly to “it is bone”; in this case use “its” which is the possessive form of the pronoun “it”.

The seemingly strange difference in the possessive form of “it” is actually easily explained by the incredibly inconsistent history of apostrophes in the English language. To learn more about the weird history of apostrophes, click the video on the right, and if you like this content become a grammar god by smashing that subscribe button.

See you next time.