Possessive Apostrophes

Well hello again.

We'll do contractions (e.g. contracting 'do not' to 'don't') another day.

For now it's what to do when something/someone owns something/someone:

Jane's porridge (single owner = apostrophe before the extra 's')
All of the boys' porridge (more than one owner = apostrophe after the already existing 's'. No further 's' required.)
The children's porridge ('the children'* make up a single group so, like with Jane who is a single person, there is an apostrophe before the extra 's')

Just ask yourself, "Who/what does _______ belong to?" After the last letter of your answer to that question, put the apostrophe. Add an extra 's' if you need an 's' sound. It's up to you whether you bother if you don't need an extra 's' sound; both Jesus' porridge and Jesus's porridge are legitimate.

A couple of tricksy areas:
1. Sometimes you will see apostrophes that aren't there because of contractions and seem to be nothing to do with anyone owning anything. Think laterally: The kids' performance 'belonged' to the kids. Last week's news 'belonged' to last week.
2. You do not need to worry about how many things are owned. You do need to worry about how many owners there are.

This is something that people do find hard so why do we have to bother? As with all grammar/punctuation it is supposed to make something seem clearer. For example, the apostrophe could clarify that there was more than one boy in the porridge scenario. Or it could clarify that the porridge wasn't made out of boys but belonged to boys. The context normally makes it obvious but the punctuation does help. In some cases, especially in officialdom, the punctuation can be essential for resolving disputes about the original meaning of something. I think that is the way of it in the legal world.

*'Children' is a collective noun. The same applies for other collective nouns such as 'team' or 'government'...or a 'bloat of hippopotami' for you collective noun lovers.