29
votes
Can you write "... me's" (the possessive)?
"The person behind me's breathing" is called a "group genitive". Grammarian Richard Nordquist states in his introduction to the topic on ThoughtCo:
In English grammar, the group ...
- 32.6k
8
votes
Accepted
Why is there an apostrophe in the name Ilya M. Sobol'?
It's a diacritic marker
The key is in the original Russian name: Илья Меерович Соболь. The last letter there (ь) is a soft sign, which is sometimes represented by an apostrophe in transliteration ...
- 64.3k
3
votes
Accepted
How to write the possessive of a proper noun that ends in a plural noun?
This is between you and your style guide of choice.
Mine is The Chicago Manual of Style, so I would go with the rule for “a plural form ending in s . . . even though the entity is singular”: the ...
- 14.3k
2
votes
Accepted
Incorrect? "This was deemed the bodies corporate decision"
The body corporate is a noun phrase – a name/title.
*“The bodies corporate decision." -> “bodies corporate” is the plural of “body corporate.” But the plural is rarely used as an attributive ...
- 39.7k
1
vote
Can you write "... me's" (the possessive)?
People might say it colloquially, but it doesn't really sound right. If you think about it as "the-person-behind-me" being one object, then it seems like it could technically be correct, but ...
- 119
1
vote
Why is the right single quotation mark used as the apostrophe?
Summary
The question can be summarized as a negative response of the poster to a recommendation from a software application. This was not to use the typographical symbol variously called the neutral, ...
- 12.3k
1
vote
Using 's with inanimate objects
To search Ngram Viewer for phrases containing apostrophes, you need to enclose them in square brackets. All the examples you gave are well-attested with -'s, except for "car's back," which ...
- 13.7k
1
vote
How to put possessive 's after a full company name
A couple of examples from Google
Jigsaw Homes Group Ltd.'s Sustainable Finance
Framework https://www.spglobal.com › research › pdf-articles ›
22...
S&P Global Ratings said that Jigsaw Homes Group ...
- 39.7k
1
vote
Is Lewis Carroll correct in his suggestion on some abbreviations?
'traveler' IS the official spelling in American English. Likewise with other verbs (and other words) ending in 'l' when a suffix is added (-er, -ed, -ing, -ous, etc) where British English doubles the '...
- 11
1
vote
Apostrophe vs. Single Quote
You asked about the semantic difference, but there is also a technical difference - ASCII and typewriter keyboards do not have a 'single quote' character, only QUOTATION MARK (U+0022) and APOSTROPHE (...
- 129
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