The correct spelling is “yours,” never “your’s.” “Yours” is a possessive pronoun, and possessive pronouns never take an apostrophe. As the Purdue Online Writing Lab explains, words like his, hers, its, ours, and yours already show ownership on their own, so adding an apostrophe is always wrong. If you write with a real-time tool like TypoGuard, this exact slip gets flagged the moment you type it.
Why “Your’s” Feels Right (But Isn’t)
We’re trained to add “apostrophe + s” to show possession — Sarah’s car, the company’s logo. So the brain naturally wants to do the same thing to your. The problem is that this rule only applies to nouns. Pronouns break it completely. “Yours” is already possessive by itself; it doesn’t need any help from an apostrophe.
The Two Words People Actually Confuse
There are really two separate mix-ups hiding here:
your = belonging to you → Is this your coffee?
you’re = you are (a contraction) → You’re going to love this.
yours = the possessive pronoun → This coffee is yours.
your’s = not a word in any context
So the apostrophe belongs in you’re (where it marks the missing letter in “you are”), but never in yours.
A Simple Rule to Remember
You’d never write his’ book or her’s car. “Yours” works the same way. If you can swap in his or hers without an apostrophe, then yours doesn’t get one either.
Examples in Context
- ✅ “The decision is yours.”
- ❌ “The decision is your’s.”
- ✅ “Is this seat yours or mine?”
- ❌ “Is this seat your’s or mine?”
Catch It Before You Send It
Apostrophe mistakes like this are easy to miss because they slip past basic spellcheckers — “your’s” isn’t flagged as misspelled, just misused. A grammar checker Chrome extension like TypoGuard catches possessive and apostrophe errors as you type, so a one-letter slip never ends up in an email to your boss.
Want to stop second-guessing apostrophes? Install TypoGuard for free and let it handle the rules for you.
