Ones/ One's
ones / one’s
The possessive pronoun “one’s” requires an apostrophe before the S, unlike “its,” “hers,” and other personal pronouns. Examples: “pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps,” “a jury of one’s peers,” “minding one’s own business.”
A simple test: try inserting “anyone’s” in place of “one’s.” If it works grammatically, you need the apostrophe in “one’s” too. When “one’s” is a contraction of “one is” it also requires an apostrophe: “no one’s listening,” “this one’s for you.”
The only times “ones” has no apostrophe are when it is being used to mean “examples” or “people” as in “ripe ones” or “loved ones,” or in the informal arithmetical expression “the ones column.”
The possessive pronoun “one’s” requires an apostrophe before the S, unlike “its,” “hers,” and other personal pronouns. Examples: “pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps,” “a jury of one’s peers,” “minding one’s own business.”
A simple test: try inserting “anyone’s” in place of “one’s.” If it works grammatically, you need the apostrophe in “one’s” too. When “one’s” is a contraction of “one is” it also requires an apostrophe: “no one’s listening,” “this one’s for you.”
The only times “ones” has no apostrophe are when it is being used to mean “examples” or “people” as in “ripe ones” or “loved ones,” or in the informal arithmetical expression “the ones column.”
Comments
Post a Comment