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I came across the following sentence:

Another inspector, Douglas E. Peters, testified that even after the F.A.A. manager had been removed, the replacement manager threatened him. The replacement pointed to a photo of Mr. Peters’ family, pointed out that both Mr. Peters and Mr. Peters’ wife had good jobs at the F.A.A., and said, “I’d hate to see you jeopardize yours and her careers” by pursuing ethics complaints against F.A.A. managers. []

Is there a trivial error or a simple typo? Or the—so-called— replacement manager had been jeopardized from possessive "her" placed after "yours"?

In other terms, shouldn't it be "your and her" rather than "yours and her"? Or am I wrong?

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possible duplicate of "Your and my [something]" vs "Yours and my...". It's not a typo - this construction is actually quite common. – FumbleFingers Jun 24 '12 at 20:48

1 Answer

It could be a typo. It's more likely to be an accurate quote.

"Your and her careers" (or career, if they are similar or linked) is grammatical but awkward.

A better way of expressing that would be her career and yours, from which it's quite easy to see how the error has arisen.

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Thank you, I voted up, obviously. One question: why do you use "to be" in "It's more likely to be an accurate quote?" As non native, I do not see any difference between "It's more likely to be an accurate quote" and "It's more likely an accurate quote." – Carlo_R. Jun 23 '12 at 17:23
I use British English. "More likely X" is an Americanism; Brits are more likely to use [not "would likely use"] the construction I did. – Andrew Leach Jun 23 '12 at 17:38
Thank you Andrew. – Carlo_R. Jun 23 '12 at 17:46

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