What is the possessive for several names?

Question

If Alice and Bob each has a house, are these "Alice and Bob's houses" or "Alice's and Bob's houses"?Does that change anything if each of the houses belongs to both of them?

Answer 1

Here's how you handle possession when it involves multiple people.

Look at the noun that requires possession. If it is singular, you only need one apostrophe, and it goes with the name of the last person. If the noun is plural (as in your example - houses), then each person needs his own apostrophe.

So, using your example, the correct answer would be...

Alice and Bob's house.

Alice's and Bob's houses.

An easy way to remember this is that singular nouns are only ONE (so they require only ONE apostrophe), while plural nouns are MORE THAN ONE (and require more than one apostrophe).