An Easy Way to Choose Between Who's and Whose

The words who's and whose are often confused and used incorrectly. Learning to use them correctly is pretty simple.

Who's is a contraction for the words who is or who has. The apostrophe is your clue that the word is a contraction. The apostrophe indicates that two words have been combined.

Example: Who's the leader of this group?

                     

Whose is the possessive form of the pronoun who and is used in questions to ask who owns something?

Example: Whose running shoes are on the porch?

An easy trick to always choose the right word is to say both words in the contraction when you read the sentence.

Read this sentence: Who's the leader of this group? as Who is the leader of this group? Because it makes sense to read it as who is, who's is the correct choice.

Read this sentence and choose the correct word:

(Who's, Whose) answers are correct? It would make no sense at all to choose the word who's, because if you read the sentence and included both words in the contraction it would read: Who is answers are correct? That is obviously wrong, wrong, wrong.

The correct choice would be: Whose answers are correct?

Click here for a FREE lesson and 20 question quiz on the use of Who's and Whose.

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*This is an updated post from 2013.

All the best,