The question of whether to write others' or other's trips up even experienced writers. Both look plausible. Both follow familiar apostrophe patterns. But they don't mean the same thing, and reaching for the wrong one in a report, proposal, or email signals a grammatical blind spot that sharp readers will notice. The short answer: others' (apostrophe after the s) is almost always the right choice.
Why "other's" is almost never correct
Other's treats "other" as a singular noun and claims it owns something. That's fine in theory: "the other's opinion" could mean "the opinion belonging to one specific other person." In practice, though, writers almost never need that construction. When you refer to people or things beyond a specific named individual, you're working in the plural. You mean several others, not one.
Consider the phrase "respecting other's views." It sounds reasonable. But grammatically it says that one unnamed other person holds views worth respecting. Almost every writer who types that sentence actually means the views of multiple people. The word they want is others'.
The singular form can exist. It's just rare. If you write "she listened to one person's view and ignored the other's," then "the other's" (meaning the second person's) is perfectly correct. One other, one set of views, singular possessive. The context makes it unambiguous.
How "others'" works
Others is already a plural noun. It follows the same rule as words like "students," "colleagues," or "managers." To show possession for a plural noun that already ends in s, you add only an apostrophe after the s. No extra s follows.
- Students' work (the work belonging to multiple students)
- Colleagues' feedback (feedback from multiple colleagues)
- Others' opinions (opinions belonging to multiple others)
That's it. The pattern is consistent across English, and others' follows it without exception.
Common places this error appears in business writing
Business writing tends to surface this mistake in a few predictable spots. Knowing where to look makes proofreading faster.
Emails about collaboration: "We should consider other's perspectives before deciding" almost always wants "others' perspectives." The writer is referring to multiple stakeholders, not a single unnamed one.
Feedback and review language: "Incorporating other's suggestions" is the version that appears most often in drafts. The corrected form is "incorporating others' suggestions."
Professional values statements: Phrases like "respecting other's time" or "valuing other's contributions" are common in HR documents and onboarding materials. Both should read with the apostrophe after the s: "others' time," "others' contributions."
Academic or analytical writing: "Building on other's research" is a frequent construction in business reports that reference prior work. Correct form: "building on others' research."
A quick test you can apply while editing
When you see either form in a draft, ask one question: am I talking about one specific other person, or about people in general?
If the answer is "people in general" or "multiple unspecified people," use others'. That covers at least 95% of real-world usage.
If you can point to exactly one unnamed person (distinct from someone already named), "the other's" is defensible. Even then, it's cleaner to rewrite: "the second person's opinion" or "the remaining candidate's score" gives the reader more to hold on to than "the other's."
How this fits into broader apostrophe discipline
The others' vs other's question is really a subset of a larger skill: knowing how plurals and possessives interact. Writers who get confused here are usually working from a rule that says "apostrophe s means possession," without the follow-up that plural nouns ending in s take the apostrophe alone. If you've ever stumbled over its, it's, or its', you've seen a similar overlap of possession and spelling choices that English handles with apostrophes in non-obvious ways.
The same principle applies to compound nouns and group references throughout business documents. Getting whose vs who's right, for instance, depends on recognizing that "whose" is already possessive and needs no apostrophe at all, while "who's" is a contraction and entirely different. The underlying skill is the same: identify what the word is doing grammatically before you punctuate it.
What about "others" with no apostrophe?
Others (no apostrophe) is the simple plural. It shows up when no possession is involved: "she asked others for input" or "others disagree." No ownership claimed, no apostrophe needed. Only add the apostrophe when something belongs to those others: "others' input," "others' disagreement with the proposal."
That three-way distinction covers all the cases you'll encounter in professional writing:
- Others = plural, no possession ("she consulted others")
- Others' = plural possessive ("she valued others' input")
- Other's = singular possessive, one specific unnamed person ("she weighed one option against the other's")
One more thing: "each other's" vs "each others'"
This pair catches writers off guard. "Each other" is treated as a singular unit in English, so the possessive is "each other's" with the apostrophe before the s. "They respected each other's boundaries" is correct. "Each others'" is not standard. The phrase "each other" never pluralizes; treat it as a fixed compound and always write "each other's."
The rule for one another's works the same way. "One another" stays singular in possessive constructions: "they reviewed one another's drafts."
Get these straight and you'll cover the full range of "other" possessives without hesitation. In professional writing, that kind of consistency builds the credibility that carries through an entire document, not just the sentence where the apostrophe sits.