The words ‘whose’ and ‘who’s’ often get confused- they sound exactly the same and look pretty similar too. So how on earth can you know for sure when you should use each one? In this blog post, we will set it out clearly for you.
Whose
‘Whose’ is the possessive form of ‘who’. So we might ask:
‘Whose is this chocolate ice cream?’
or
‘Whose is this green pen?’
Be careful with word order here. We never say:
‘This green pen is whose?’
If you often make mistakes like these, you should consider having your word checked for spelling and grammatical errors.
‘Whose’ should always come at the beginning of the sentence or phrase.
Who’s
‘Who’s’ is a contraction (a shortening) of ‘who is’ or ‘who has’. It is used in sentences like:
‘Who’s coming to the party on Saturday?’
Who’s with me?’
Which One To Use?
The simplest way to tell which one to use is to always try to replace ‘who’s’ with ‘who is’ in your mind as you read it. Then you can easily see if it makes sense or not. Look at the following sentences and see if you can work out which are correct!
‘Whose shoes are these?’
‘Who’s shoes are these?’
‘Who’s got my coat?’
‘Whose got my coat?’
‘Who’s been to the zoo before?’
‘Whose been to the zoo before?’
You can check your answers here!
Did you get them right?