Possessive: Beginning, beginner's, beginners' beginners class? (2025)

I'm editing an English study textbook at the moment. There's an exercise that takes the form of an advert for swimming lessons, and it's headed "Beginning Class" (as in the lowest level). I immediately changed it to "Beginner's Class", but a moment of doubt about American English (I'm British) led me to do a Google search and I found there are lots of hits for "Beginning Class".

I just want to throw this open to my friends on this forum and see which version they would go with if they had to make a choice. Thanks.

Well, I'm American, and in my mind, there is a slight difference in the two words:

Beginner's Class, as Panj said, indicates that this is a class for (usually more than one) beginner. It is the domain of novices.

Beginning Class would indicate that this is the first in a series of classes:

• Beginning
• Intermediate
• Advanced
• Expert

for example.

The Slippery Slide said:

"Beginning Class" (as in the lowest level). I immediately changed it to "Beginner's Class", but a moment of doubt about American English (I'm British) led me to do a Google search and I found there are lots of hits for "Beginning Class".

I just want to throw this open to my friends on this forum and see which version they would go with if they had to make a choice. Thanks.

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JazzByChas said:

Well, I'm American, and in my mind, there is a slight difference in the two words:

Beginner's Class, as Panj said, indicates that this is a class for (usually more than one) beginner. It is the domain of novices.
[...]

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Hi JazzByChas. What Panj said about this was that:

Panj. said:

A Beginner's Guide is aimed at an individual beginner.

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I hope it won't seem fussy to me to say that this is rather different than your

JazzByChas said:

for (usually more than one) beginner

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More than one beginner means plural beginners. So you are saying, if I've understood you, that a Beginner's Guide is a guide for beginners.

A Beginner's Guide is a guide for an individual beginner, in my view, and in Panj.'s, if I understood him correctly. A Beginners Guide is a guide for beginners, and it could also be called a a Beginners' Guide, if you like apostrophes. Call it a Beginner's Guide and it's a guide for one beginner: if there were several beginners then they would each need one of such a guide.

Now this class is for beginners. I fully take your point about your hierarchy of possible classes, but we aren't talking about the Beginning Class here - that phrase would be perfectly acceptable in BE too, I think.

However, a class for beginners is, in BE, in my view, a Beginners Class, or a Beginners' Class. Call it a Beginner's Class and you've only got one child in the class, and that child a beginner.

Thanks for all your input. Still don't agree about the pluralisation, but it's been interesting. Actually, the last few editions of Private Eye magazine have contained an entertainingly pedantic debate about this apostrophe problem, in which many very well-informed linguistic experts have failed to agree on the correct way to apostrophize "Pedant's Corner". If they can't agree, I don't think much to our chances. It's just one of those grey areas.

In Britain, it's never "Beginning Class", but my job is to defer to American English when there's any doubt (as AE speakers are in the majority), so I've decided to go with that. Thank you all for your time.

I would say:

"Beginners class"

Rationale: It is a class for beginners, it does not belong to one or many beginners.

The Slippery Slide said:

[...] Actually, the last few editions of Private Eye magazine have contained an entertainingly pedantic debate about this apostrophe problem, in which many very well-informed linguistic experts have failed to agree on the correct way to apostrophize "Pedant's Corner". If they can't agree, I don't think much to our chances. It's just one of those grey areas.[...]

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And indeed this forum airs the debate on a regular basis with exactly the same outcome.
The reassuring aspect to the debates is that each of us discovers that people hold completely different views so we are in good company whichever "side" we take in the debate.
It was this debate that finally hooked the young panj two days after he arrived at WordReference:
Possessive - Woman’s college - Baby oil - Beginners class - singular/plural possessives.

Yes, I acknowledge it may well.

The linked (in Panj.'s post 9) previous thread seemed to conclude, as it ran out of steam, that humans (apart from babies) took apostrophes, while non-humans, dogs and olives, for instance, could be converted to adjectives without many problems - dog lead, olive oil. Despite my love of order, I was surprised at this, not believing English to be as well behaved as it suggests.

We, in this thread, have hinted at a difference between attribution and possession.

The women's college - the college for women
The women's college - the college belonging to the women.

though I'm not sure that we've reached a conclusion about the consequences of the difference for apostrophe use: Panj seemed to suggest that we could drop the apostrophe when talking about attribution; however, we pronounce the s in a women's college, and can't surely write it a womens college.

This leaves me with a Beginners' Class as a class for beginners unless we resurrect the we-drop-the-apostrophe-for-attribution suggestion, and if we do that, we need to explain how we deal with the women's college - the college for women.

Perhaps we are back with the idea that irregular plurals are a special case. Wouldn't that make a Ladies College correct?