Written English experts: HELP! I have apostrophe questions!

[bbernardini]

I'm not sure where the apostrophe should go on the word "students" in these two sentences. Thoughts? (I've left them out here on purpose.)

1. She goes on to explain her wonder at the students reaction to her unit on musicals.

2. Did Dubach set out to change the students lives?

3. Educators simply cannot deny the drastic effect mp3 downloading has had on their students music appreciation.

4. Teachers can easily send mp3s of music heard in class to students cell phones.

[brentspeak]

1. students' for all of them

[bbernardini]

2. Yay! I was right! I am so smart! S-M-R-T!

I mean S-M-A-R-T!

Thanks!

[yewberry]

3. Oh, possible problem with #1

The other sentences are very clearly pluralizing "student," but the first doesn't explicitly do that.

If these are part of a body of text, you can fairly assume that the intent in sentence #1 is for plural to be understood; if these are part of a test or some other format that doesn't use contextual clues, "student" may be singular and the apostrophe in that case would be placed before the final "s."

[Neil Lisst]

5. True, but one would normally use "a student" not "the student"

when referring to one student. But context tells the tale, and that is lacking in the first sentence, so your point is well-taken. It could be plural or singular.

[scubadude]

4. The crux of the buiscuit is the apostrophe...

Sorry, couldn't pass up that Zappa lyric....

Scuba

[July]

6. #2, #3, #4 : students'; #1 has two possible answers.

In #1, if the sentence is referring to one student, it should read "student's."

If it is referring to more than one, it should read "students'."

I'm leaning toward "student's" because it says "reaction" (not "reactions"), but the sentence could be talking about a collective reaction, so it is not absolutely clear.