Hot answers tagged possessive
8
"Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler's contribution to number theory was [...]" is grammatical and natural.
You're right that the rewrite you suggest is pedantic, but that's just one way of rewriting it. If the remainder of the sentence is short, you can also rewrite it as, for example:
Leonhard Euler, an 18th-century Swiss mathematician ...
4
It's grammatically incorrect: "You know you're having a rough day when kittens don't even make you smile" is what was meant. It was either a typo, a thinko, or just another ignoramus expressing itself.
That said, however, it is possible to say something like this:
Your having a bad day is not going to ruin my day.
Some native speakers might write ...
4
We write it as "Mother's Day" because it was trademarked that way by the holiday's founder. It was also signed into legislature as an official holiday with the apostrophe before the 's'. People will argue endlessly about the correct grammatical usage of the apostrophe depending on the context, but officially, it is always "Mother's Day". You will never see a ...
2
“Near St. John's church” vs. “near the St. John's church” vs. “near the St. John church” [duplicate]
Your first answer is correct.
In my area we have a hotel near St. Andrew's Church. It is also near the Fulwell Methodist Church.
and
I visited the Freeman Hospital. I didn't find it as nice as St. Cuthbert's Hospital.
and
I did have a nice day out at St. Peter's Cathedral but the weather wasn't as nice as when I visited Durham Cathedral.
...
1
As Wikipedia and the Purdue OWL both note:
Singular possessives always add ’s.
Plural possessives add ’s if they don't already end in s.
Therefore, fish becomes fish’s, regardless of whether it is singular or plural.
1
If you want to communicate that John and Becky both possess the same knowledge (i.e., you're referring to the idea that they both possess knowledge about English grammar), then you'd add an apostrophe onto just the last person listed (e.g., John and Becky's knowledge).
If you want to communicate that John and Becky possess different knowledge (i.e., you're ...
1
I mention the phenomenon — or old habit, perhaps — of saying for conscience’ sake in this answer. You’ll also see the expression for righteousness’ sake in older religious works. A more common one is for goodness’ sake.
There’s no extra syllable in any of these, as the orthography indicates.
In all these, the formulaic for X’ sake (where X ends in ...
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