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Post by james on May 23, 2012 10:06:56 GMT
A question regarding the possessive:
Jack and Jills pail of water.
Does this sentence need to be punctuated:
Jack and Jill's pail of water.
on the basis that "Jack and Jill" is a compound noun?
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Post by Dave on May 23, 2012 15:10:37 GMT
First off, I contend that the apostrophe isn't punctuation, but is like a letter in that it's part of the spelling, operating at the word level and not the sentence level where punctuation like the comma and semicolon perform their functions. If Jack and Jill jointly own the pail of water, it would be written as Jack and Jill's pail of water.
Jill and Jack's pail of water. If they each have their own pails, then Jack's and Jill's pails of water. Note that pails is now plural because there are at least two pails involved. If more than one pail is jointly owned Jack and Jill's pails of water. Use the possessive apostrophe on the possessor closest (as written in the sentence) to the jointly possessed item: Jack, Jill, and Jim's pail of water. |
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 7, 2012 23:30:15 GMT
The rest of this thread has been moved to Language Discussion because it contained no further discussion of the original query. |
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