The plural of “how-to” is “how-tos”. How-to’s is also acceptable but less common nowadays. The hyphen is optional. To avoid confusion, use “how-to guides”.
How-tos
How-tos is the most common form of the plural of how-to.
It may look strange and some people may read it as “how toss” but it is correct.
If you are writing for a blog and you are writing about a series of how-tos, you can use “How-to videos” or “how-to guides” or “how-to articles”.
Examples:
Do we need more how-to guides for our website?
Have you seen the Youtube channel 5-minute crafts? It is a series of how-to videos.
How-to’s
Plural nouns with apostrophes are becoming rare nowadays. Usually, when you see a noun with an apostrophe and s, it is a possessive adjective.
This is Sean’s house.
In this case. Sean is the owner of the house.
Of course, in the case of how-to, we just want to make it plural!
The apostrophe used to be common in plurals in English for loan words or new words or set phrases.
No if’s and but’s, Just do it!
Some people would accept “How-to” in this category.
Conor is the main writer here at One Minute English and was an English teacher for 10 years. He is interested in helping people with their English skills and learning about using A.I tools at work.