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You (plural) have different memories. Suppose you are all students in my class. Now I want to ask you to compare your memories by talking to students in another class and hearing about their memories. So should I say:

Compare your memories with others?

or

Compare your memories with others'?

The second makes more sense because you are not comparing your memories to people but to THEIR memories, but something about the sentence looks weird, so I thought to ask here.

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    If you are literally saying it, it makes no difference! If you are writing it - we would say "Compare your memories with other people's", so I guess the apostrophe is required.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Dec 31, 2021 at 9:11
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    The latter (with apostrophe) is safer. In both cases a piece is omitted yet assumed. With omitted parts included: (1) Compare your memories with those of others; (2) Compare your memories with others' memories.
    – Michael
    Commented Dec 31, 2021 at 9:33
  • Say either one. No one will notice the difference. Especially if you actually do say it.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Dec 31, 2021 at 16:55

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It depends what you mean. The difference is subtle, but there is a difference.

Compare your memories with others.

Compare your memories with other memories. Obviously, the other memories must be other people's memories, but others here is referring to memories, not people. That is, others corresponds to memories in your sentence.

Compare your memories with others'.

Compare your memories with those of other people. Here, others' matches your in your sentence.

I guess that in most cases, the sentence is directing you to the "those of other people" meaning, in which case an apostrophe is preferable.

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