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I know the topic has already been discussed, for example, here the accepted answer talks about possessives, but I wonder if my specific case is about possessives or something else.

These are the sentences I found in a quiz, choose the right one:

  • I have no more bread I must go to the baker's
  • I have no more bread I must go to the bakers
  • I have no more bread I must go to the bakers'

Baker is a person whose trade is making and selling bread and cakes, singular. Bakers is the plural of baker?

What are those apostrophes and S's? What do they stand for? What is the rule? Please answer or point me to a relevant link, thanks a lot.

Feel free to edit my question. Thanks

Nicola
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    All your examples are wrong, for other reasons than you ask about.

    Please take the Question somewhere such as English Language Leaners and even there, consider re-phrasing…

     – Robbie Goodwin Nov 22 '18 at 19:26
  • In order for any of your sentences to be grammatical, you need to use a conjunction or a semicolon. Or you need to break them each into two sentences. No more bread I must go makes no sense. – Jason Bassford Nov 22 '18 at 19:56
  • As for the actual question, how many bakers are you going to—and are you talking about seeing one or more people or going to one or more shops? The last word in each of the sentences could be correct—depending on what you're trying to convey. – Jason Bassford Nov 22 '18 at 19:58

2 Answers2

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Bakers is the plural for baker. Baker's is the possessive. Bakers' is possessive plural

When you are writing a possessive noun, write "es" at the end (eg Bus + es = Buses) then replace the"e" with an apostrophe (= Bus's) but then if it ends "s's" take away the last "s" and you have Bus' (eg the Bus' engine)

Plural would be Buses'

Alec Kyle Sibbald
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They are all grammatically correct, as is baker and they are all semantically correct as there could, in principle, be more than one baker working in the same shop.

So we have to turn to common usage and cultural norms to find which is more usual. The situation in the UK is as follows:

In common, and particularly historical, usage, and even if there are several people baking bread, who would all, technically, be bakers, the term is usually applied only to the one person in charge, not the assistants who actually bake the bread, so the singular form baker's is correct as the alternative to baker. The word shop is often the correct term to infer but it depends on the business. For example we might say the lawyer's [office] or the blacksmith's [forge].

We extend the pattern to businesses named after people e.g. Sainsbury's named after Mr Sainsbury and with the name Sainsbury over the door and even Tesco's where Tesco is the actual made-up name of the business.

David Robinson
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