Is it "men's" or "mens'"? And what's the rule? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

You are referring to the eyes of men (plural), so the apostrophe follows the "n".

Solution 2:

The short answer is: "men's" is correct.

Let's look at a few different examples to see why.

First, let's look at a word for which you add an "-s" to make it plural.

"One dog" changes to "two dogs."

If we wanted to say that a bone belonged to a single dog, we would say: "The bone is the dog's."

If we wanted to say that a bone belonged to two dogs, we would not say: "the bone is the dogs's." Instead, we would say: "the bone is the dogs.'"

Now, let's look at a word that doesn't become plural by adding an "-s."

"One man" changes to "two men."

If we wanted to say that a car belonged to one man, we would say: "the car is the man's."

If we wanted to say that a car belonged to two men, we would not say: "the car is the mens.'" This would mean that there were multiple "mens," which isn't possible because "men" is already plural. This only works in the example with "dog" and "dogs" because you can have multiple "dogs."

Instead, we would say: "the car is the men's."

I suggest that you read THIS page about apostrophes to see how they are used to form possessives (go to the section titled "Possessives").