of areas involved with patients’ care - or patients care?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
User’s/Users’/Users Group

What would be the correct way with UK English spelling:

patients' care or patients care?

I have terrible search skills, I could not find an appropriate answer (did not know how to search for these "'s" or "s'" differences).

You do need to know what to search for. Here's one, which also links to another. User’s/Users’/Users Group — Andrew Leach, Sep 28 '12 at 15:28
By going to that link I found another one that was really useful: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/36657/users-guide-vs-users-guide - check Robusto's and Mr. Shiny and New 安宇's reply - it helped a lot. — João Paulo, Sep 28 '12 at 15:36

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

There does not seem to be a whole lot of consensus on this but this link (Andrew provided) was useful: User’s Guide vs Users’ Guide

User's guide: A guide belonging to one user.

Users' guide: A guide belonging to all the users.

And:

The difference is this: s' is used for plural possessive; 's is used for singular possessive; s' can also be used at the end of proper names that end in s to indicate the possessive without adding the extra s.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 28 '12 at 15:37

0

You would find both in the UK, but the apostrophe is disappearing in such cases and, it must be said, it is no great loss.

answered Sep 28 '12 at 15:37

Barrie England

140,205

I think just saying “patient care” is becoming the norm in many of these situations. – tchrist Sep 28 '12 at 17:03

of areas involved with patients’ care - or patients care?

2 Answers2