Question

State the possessive form of “U.S.”. Do you think it is U.S.’ or U.S.’s?

Answer 1

Hint: Remember that there is no difference in the rule of finding possessive forms of abbreviations, they are done in the same way as done for regular nouns. For a noun in it’s singular form, the possessive form will be adding an apostrophe and ‘s’. But in case of a plural noun it will be just retaining the ‘s’ of the noun and adding an apostrophe alone. Remember that here the U.S. is the United States which is a plural proper noun.

Complete answer:
Now we need to find the possessive form of the noun U.S. To do this let us note down the key points we need to remember while trying to find the possessive form of any noun:
- An abbreviation is given here, but their possessive can be formed in the same way as we would do for the expanded form also.
- Now we know the difference between a singular noun possessive form and a plural, the difference is that if it is singular then the possessive would be (‘s) but for a plural noun it would be (‘) after the noun.
- Here U.S being United States is originally a plural proper noun, so we follow the same format that we would use for any plural noun to find the possessive form.
- So without a doubt the possessive form of U.S is U.S’.

The final answer is the U.S’.

Note: It is important for us to note that whenever we find the possessive form of any noun that is in its plural form, then the noun is mostly retained in its original form even when we take its possessive form. This is the grammatically approved way to write the possessive form or any plural noun, that ends with ‘s’. So we do this by writing the same word in its plural form as it is and just like how in any normal possessive form, we put an apostrophe at the end of the word. A few examples would be: the possessive form of lions will be lions’, and then the possessive form of babies will be babies’.