7. Possessive Forms vs. Attributive Forms

7. Possessive Forms vs. Attributive Forms
Organizations, businesses, and government agencies often refer to themselves attributively, meaning that one noun modifies another — for example, respectively, note the names of the California Teachers Association, the Diners Club, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The key noun in each name takes the plural s but not the genitive apostrophe, because the entities are intended for the referenced groups rather than established by them. However, similarly constructed generic terms such as “farmers’ market” and “girls’ soccer team” are genitive phrases and should feature an apostrophe after the plural s.

Similarly, a name used as an adjective is attributive, not possessive: Write “the Jones Mansion,” not “the Jones’s Mansion,” as, for example, a designation for a historical landmark (though “the Jones’s mansion” is correct for a simple description of, for example, a neighbor’s house), or “the Vikings game” (but “the Vikings’ win-loss record”).