OURS, HERS, THEIRS

Hiya Kids,

Hope your studies have been going well. They are no doubt winding down to the Christmas holidays. Can’t leave you for the holidays without another reminder about apostrophes and when not to use them.

One of the challenges with English is that many people tend to think if there is an ‘s’ at the end of the word and you are talking about possessive, then you should write 's. Not always so. Let’s examine the following scenarios:

It belongs to her. It is hers.

It belongs to him. It is his.

It belongs to them. It is theirs.

It belongs to us. It is ours.

It belongs to you. It is yours.

Please note that NONE of these require an apostrophe. How do you remember? Think of ‘his’. You would never think to write: it is hi’s.

Now think of the other words as belonging to that group of possessives: yours, hers, his, theirs, ours. No apostrophes anywhere.

Pretty simple, huh?

And then there’s this one that’s also related:

It belongs to me. It is mine.

Mine. Mine. Just mine.

Many people tend to say ‘mines’ because every other word in this category carries an ‘s’ at the end. But you and I are clever and know that ‘mines’ refers only to gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines, and the like.

Here’s a chance for you to practice:

That car belongs to me. It is ……………………

This is our owl. It is ……………………

That pencil is my brother’s. It is ……………………

Those books belong to you. They are ……………………

That lollipop is my sister’s. It is ……………………

That is their house. It is ……………………

Hope you had no apostrophes. Do me a favour? Teach someone else. We’ll have fewer spelling mistakes in the world. That would make my day.

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As I like to say: Perfectly Write Kids - saving the English language, one word at a time.