Eh, Tars may be technically correct, but I seriously doubt that’s what the packagers were going for. I’d bet a large hunk of something that they meant it to be the plural of “pro”, not the possessive.
Wrong. “Pro’s” is not a legitimate contraction (two words combined into one.) Advertisements is not “ad’s” for example; it’s “ads.”
I had a similar experience in a Kmart the other day. I was flipping through the t-Shirts in the men’s department and there was a shirt with a sentiment along the lines of:
“I’m not avoiding you, your just annoying.”
I couldn’t believe that made it all the way through the design, approval, printing, sales, distribution and merchandising without anyone noticing that.
Turns out that the style manuals aren’t consistent about making the plural of an abbreviation. Some say that one should use an apostrophe, others say no, and still others say “it depends.” You pays your money, you takes your choice…
Yeah, around these parts, possessives and contractions have apostrophes, but plurals don’t.
Beadalin**'s** post has so many rules, it**'s** crazy.
The only exception to the possessive-apostrophe rule I can think of is its as the possessive form of something belonging to an it: “The building is tall, but its windows are tiny.”
Hmmm, hadn’t thought of that. So I guess we can apply that to “men’s”-- the default is that you use an apostrophe for any possessive, but if the possessive and the contraction will be the same, drop the apostrophe on the possessive. (My God, that was a sentence and a half.)
So anyway, “men’s” would never be misunderstood to mean a contraction of “men is”, and “men” is already a plural of “man”, so it’s safe to use the possessive aprostrophe. Or something. If something belongs to or is for men: men’s. Same with, for example, women’s restroom or children’s playground.
I think I should have stopped at saying that possessives always have apostrophes.
For your information Coldfire, the correct usage is “mens’s”
And don’t worry Gazelle The use of “pro’s” on the cover of your box is both accurate and correct. It’s what known as the Guisseppe exception, which states that if referring to an habitual ongoing active, than the gerund (i.e. "running) is obsconded to the present tense in the derivative posessive singular, necessitating the use of the apostrophe.
So be very happy with your present, and don’t worry about it.
robes - more than one robe (“Find the robes.”)
robe’s - belonging to (or associated with) a rope (“Find the robe’s cord.”)
robes’ - belonging to a bunch of robes (“Find the robes’ rack.”)
But, as Beadalin points out “Men” is already plural so Men’s is right.
Unless we want to be silly and call it the “Mens’ Department”
So would it be “John’s car”, or is it “Johns car” because “John’s” looks too much like a contraction of “John” and “is”? Is that the exception - so, always apostrophes, except when it makes it look like a contraction?