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I have to translate the title of my college work and I can't decide whether it is correct to say "Colleagues rating system" or "Colleagues' rating system", because I have often seen examples where genitive/possessive is used without apostrophe or character 's' appended to the noun. Unfortunately I have failed to find any resources for this so as a non-native speaker I must ask for your help!

How it really is? Is it possible to omit apostrophe or s in genitive?

user1612250
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  • You might want to add the apostrophe to avoid ambiguity. Is a "colleagues rating system" a rating system owned (or invented or performed) by colleagues, or are you rating the colleagues? For the second, an apostrophe would be ungrammatical. – Peter Shor Feb 27 '16 at 15:48
  • @PeterShor the second - "you are rating colleagues" - is my case, thank you for clearing confusion for this particular query. Now I see that it is not considered possessive (in my native language it a bit different), but it is still genitive, right? – user1612250 Feb 27 '16 at 16:39
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    Have a look at @tchrist 's answer in the [Saxon Genitive or adjective](Saxon Genitive or adjective) for a start. And adding to Peter's answer, if you are rating the colleagues, a 'colleague rating system' is another and perhaps stylistically preferable option. // Peter's comment shows the advantage in keeping the apostrophe for cases of possession-rather-than-association. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 27 '16 at 16:40
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    Whether it's a genitive depends on what definition of "genitive" you use ... looking on the web, some grammar websites say English has no genitive case; some use "genitive" and "possessive" as synonyms, and some say you can have genitives that aren't possessive. And adding to @Edwin's comment, the apostrophe is used for some cases of association which aren't quite possession, but not this one. – Peter Shor Feb 27 '16 at 19:46
  • Adding to Peter's comment, the situation is messy. We have Dogs' Homes and Dogs Homes; Working Mens Clubs and a few Working Men's Clubs.... Look up 'apostrophe' here, and check online etc for individual usages. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 27 '16 at 20:42
  • Thank you both for clearing things up a little! I also found this article a bit helpful.

    So the answer to initial question is that it depends for genitive (as there is no clear definition of it), right? But what about possessives? Are there situations when it is grammatically correct to use it without apostrophe/'s'?

     – user1612250 Feb 27 '16 at 22:38
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    There are certainly lots of places where a possessive is used both with and without an apostrophe (e.g., farmers market). Whether it's correct in these situations probably depends on the exact phrase, and on who you ask. – Peter Shor Feb 28 '16 at 17:07
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    This looks similar to the goats milk question. – Lawrence Mar 28 '16 at 19:37
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    I’m voting to close this question because the OP did not state what they wanted the phrase to mean, "Colleagues rating system" - a system for rating colleagues or "Colleagues' rating system" the rating system used by colleagues. -- it is not for EL&U to guess. – Greybeard Mar 30 '23 at 12:28

2 Answers2

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Since "colleagues" is a plural noun and has already been added an "s" to pluralize it you do not add a second "s" to produce the possessive form, only the apostrophe. Something different happens when the plural noun does not finish in "s".(like children --- possessive children's...)

GLADYS DRUST N.
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I do not know if this may answer your doubts. When you use noun + ' + noun, (according to the rules I mentioned) you are expressing the relation between owner and belonging, whereas, if you don't use the apostrophe, the role of the noun changes and what you are doing with the noun is using it as if it were an adjective so, you would be classifying "rating system" as if you said "technical rating system", for example. The latter wouldn't really refer to possession.

GLADYS DRUST N.
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