Apostrophes are punctuation marks used to indicate possession; the placement of an apostrophe depends upon the word being made possessive. Apostrophes are also used in contractions; however, contractions are not common in academic writing.
Note the italicization, bolding, and highlighting used for emphasis in the examples on this page.
See the examples below:
- Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning is based on his experiments with dogs.
- The company’s code of conduct is included in the employee manual.
- Jones’s (2017) research revolved around online academic writing feedback.
Note that singular nouns ending in "s" still take an apostrophe and an additional "s" (e.g., Jones’s research).
See the examples below:
- The Nurses’ Association has a code of conduct.
- The researchers’ methods were sound.
- I did not use companies’ private documents in my analysis.
See the examples below:
- I distributed recruitment flyers at St. Paul Children’s Hospital.
- My goal was to explore the perceptions of participants who attended the women’s health care conference.
Instead of writing
Use the uncontracted form:
Some common apostrophe errors are easy to avoid. Do not use an apostrophe in the following situations:
INCORRECT: I received the contact information for the teacher’s who attended the conference.
CORRECT: I received the contact information for the teachers who attended the conference.
INCORRECT: I asked the CEO’s to define their own leadership style.
CORRECT: I asked the CEOs to define their own leadership style.
INCORRECT: I initially limited my search to the publications within the last 5 years, but most of the seminal research cited in this document was written in the 1960’s.
CORRECT: I initially limited my search to the publications within the last 5 years, but most of the seminal research cited in this document was written in the 1960s.