Read this before using apostrophes in holiday cards

• Don't write: "Love, the Smith's"
• Do write: "Love, the Smiths"

Between the lines: Adding an apostrophe is meant to show possession or a missing letter, as in a contraction.

Meanwhile, adding an s to most nouns — and an es to nouns that end in s or z — makes them plural.

• For example: "the Smiths" or "the Joneses"

Irregular nouns can require additional spelling changes when going from singular to plural (like baby to babies), but the rule for making proper nouns (like last names) plural is to just add s.

• See: "the Murphys" or "the Chos"

However, if you're saying that a Thanksgiving dinner is at "the Smiths' house," you'd use the plural possessive like that, because you're showing it's at the house that belongs to multiple members of the Smith family.

Even grammar experts agree that apostrophes can be "confusing," Courtney Napoles, director of language research at Grammarly, tells Axios.

• "As long as you're able to communicate clearly … that's the important thing here."

The intrigue: The language has continued to evolve since the 1500s, when the apostrophe was first used, Napoles says.

• You may have noticed the lack of apostrophe above, with "1500s." That's because today if you want to write years like "1940s," style guides say no apostrophes are needed (unless you shorten the word to '40s, with the apostrophe standing in for the 19).
• "However, I've seen some evidence that the common use actually used to be to do 1940-apostrophe-s to indicate that there were the years that belong to the decade of 1940," Napoles says.

Pro tip: If making your last name plural looks weird to you, Napoles recommends rephrasing things.

• Instead of writing "the Napoleses," she often goes with "the Napoles family."

1 last thing: There's no apostrophe in "Happy holidays."