The apostrophe B Answers

1 It was obvious they hadn‘t realised their colleagues might all lose their jobs.
2 The driver‘s schedule proved entirely unrealistic (if referring to one driver). or
The drivers‘ schedule proved entirely unrealistic (if referring to two or more drivers).
3 You‘d never have thought she‘d be put off by a few drops of rain.
4 The highlight of St John‘s Cathedral is its fine stained-glass windows.
5 We plan to set off on a two-day hike in two hours‘ time.
6 "For pity‘s sake, it‘s only a game, don‘t you realise?" (For pity’s sake is an old-fashioned way of saying ‘for goodness sake’).

7 either They‘d moved their possessions into their neighbour‘s garage (if they have one neighbour) or
7 They‘d moved their possessions into their neighbours‘ garage (if they have two neighbours).
8 June‘s usually most people‘s favourite month, as rainfall‘s at its lowest, and sunshine is at its highest.
9 Mike and Rachel‘s father‘ll be more diplomatic than ours.

Notes
If the sentence read ‘Mike and Rachel Johnson‘s father will be more diplomatic than ours’ there would still be only one apostrophe, and in the same position after the surname.

Neither possessive adjectives nor pronouns ever have an apostrophe. Eg My car is older than his / hers / yours / theirs. Their car is newer than mine / ours.

The plural form of nouns never has an apostrophe either – but this is a frequent error you will see in Britain, especially on notices in shops – to such an extent that the grammarian Lynne Truss calls the incorrectly used apostrophe in plural nouns ‘the greengrocer’s apostrophe‘ (which could also be punctuated ‘the greengrocers’ apostrophe‘!) The plural of potato is potatoes, and the plural of pizza is pizzas. You’d hardly believe this when you walk round a town centre in the UK!

20 Jim and Mary have booked a whole month‘s holiday on Dartmoor.
21 The Grahams‘ children both support York‘s football and rugby teams.

Here the use of ‘the‘ indicates that Graham is the surname of the family, not the first name of a man. This indicates that the children belong to more than one person – the Grahams – so the apostrophe indicates that.
To express a (married) couple or several members of one family – brothers / sisters/ aunts etc – we say the, eg Mary Robinson and John Robinson, but together the Robinsons.
We have a lot of English first names which can also be surnames: Charles, Michael, Craig, James, John, David. Eg: Peter James, Philip Douglass.
They often have a version which is only a surname eg Roberts / Peters / Davids / Davidson / Andrews / Anderson / Richards / Richardson / Phillips / Phillipson. In Wales many names are still continued through families, so be ready to come across Morgan Morgan, David Davids, William Williams, Evan Evans.

22 The documentaries are on in an hour‘s time.