When you want to say that the book belongs to George, then you will likely follow the standard convention of adding an apostrophe and an “S” to George to signify this kind of possession: George’s book.
If you want to flip that statement around a bit while still retaining the same meaning, you could also say that the book is George’s. That is perfectly valid and completely acceptable. However, you can’t apply this same logic across the board.
The first ever Grammar 101 post on this blog covered the difference between its and it’s. In that blog post, we discussed how “it’s” is always going to be short for “it is,” whereas “its” is the word you want to signify possession. If we want to talk about the window on the car, we could refer to “its window” (and not it’s window). This kind of logic is what you’d want to use when flipping the statement around with her, their, our and your.
Let’s say that Lucy has a camera. If that is the case, then we could say that it’s her camera, correct? If we did the same kind of statement-flipping as we did with George’s book, we would then say that the camera is hers. You’ll notice that “hers” does not have an apostrophe in there.
“Her’s” (with the apostrophe) is incorrect and does not exist in the English language. Confusingly, the masculine version in either configuration remains as “his.” If Tom had the camera instead, we would say it’s his camera and that the camera is his. This is why you may walk into a store and see “his and hers” bath towels for sale.
By extension (and as may be able to guess from the title to this post), you similarly do not need to use an apostrophe when flipping things around on their, our or your.
- Their computer = The computer is theirs
- Our house = The house is ours
- Your flowers = The flowers are yours
Another way to think about it is that hers, theirs, ours and yours is equivalent to her/their/our/your + noun. Here are a few examples to illustrate.
- I have my keys. Where are yours? = I have my keys. Where are your keys?
- My desk is cleaner than hers. = My desk is cleaner than her desk.
- Ours is faster than theirs. = Our boat is faster than their boat.
That last sentence makes the assumption that the listener/reader already knows that we are referring to a boat, but you get the idea.
The occasional typo can be forgiven and no one is going to confuse your meaning if you use our’s instead of our’s, but it’s still important to be careful with your grammar. This is particularly true when your reputation is on the line; a prospective employer may choose the other candidate if their resume is more grammatically-correct than yours.
Great post Michael, but it is something that I guess I will always need help with. A perfect example is the sentence where you use “Let’s.” Why the apostrophe? Granted I know nothing about grammar except what I learned here and the things I learn while proofing with a grammar checker.
“Let’s” is short for “let us.” The apostrophe signifies the omitted letters, the same way you would with they’re, don’t and I’m, for example.
I get pretty irritated when I see others using “your” when they meant “you’re”, and “theres”, when they actually meant “theirs”!