apostrophe use...

[steffirnz]

I am stuck with how to say 'The Niece's Room, or 'The Nieces Room' or 'The Nieces' Room' - which one is it please? :-)

[Verbivore]

Mar 20, 2014 3:53:46 GMT steffirnz said:

I am stuck with how to say 'The Niece's Room, or 'The Nieces Room' or 'The Nieces' Room' - which one is it please? :-)

All three of them are said the same way; however, the way to write it is:

* if it's the room of only one niece: the niece's room
* if it's the room of more than one niece: the nieces' room.

For future reference, a simple rule of thumb:
Whoever or whatever is the "possessor" -- the entity that does the "owning" -- goes before the apostrophe; so when one niece "owns" the room, niece is the owner, so niece's; when more than one niece "owns" the room, the owner is a multiple of nieces, so nieces'. 

Hope that helps.

[steffirnz]

Thanks Verbivore :-) thats great help.

[Indianjo]

I am confused. Verbivore says, "Whoever or whatever is the possessor..........". In my school days, I was taught that an inanimate object should not have an apostrophe. An inanimate object cannot possess anything. So, you should not say, "The Company's file is missing". Rather, you should say, "The file of the Company is missing".

Therefore, I agree with 'Whoever' but not 'whatever'. Mind you, my grammar lessons date back sixty years. Have the rules changed?

[Verbivore]

Sept 22, 2016 4:14:37 GMT Indianjo said:

I am confused. Verbivore says, "Whoever or whatever is the possessor..........". In my school days, I was taught that an inanimate object should not have an apostrophe. An inanimate object cannot possess anything. So, you should not say, "The Company's file is missing". Rather, you should say, "The file of the Company is missing".

Therefore, I agree with 'Whoever' but not 'whatever'. Mind you, my grammar lessons date back sixty years. Have the rules changed?

Welcome, Indianjo  :-)

No, the "rules" haven't changed – just the understanding of them. Many of us were taught such nonsense in the 50s and 60s, but such is an example of the erroneous "rules" taught to us by ill-informed teachers, or those who, while informed, were (misguidedly) trying to "keep things simple for the littlies".

Possession of the grammatical kind doesn't necessarily imply ownership, but rather a relationship. If a noun is prefaced by of, to, for, by, with, or from, it is, in English grammar, possessive, and therefore takes the "apostrophe of possession". (Latin, on the other hand, would divide those cases thus: of = genitive case ("possessive"); to, for = dative case; by, with, from = ablative case. English grammar makes no such distinctions and calls them all possessive case.)

Some examples:
car's wheels: the wheels of or for the car;
firm's letter: the letter of, by, or from the firm;
toaster's current: the current for the toaster
garbage dump's odour: the odour of or from the garbage dump.

Many schoolteachers of old (those who taught you and me) were amateur pedants. Another error promulgated by them, in my schools at least, was that one should "never say me" (as in, e.g., "Me and Jane went to the shops", which led to the nonsense "He gave it to Bob and I", whereas one can't give something to I, – it must be to me. This rot was based not on sound grammatical principles but on the "politeness rule" that said one must always place I last; it got twisted into this silliness.

I hope that unconfuses you.  :-)

[Indianjo]

Thanks for such a rapid reply. I'm too old to change. When I'm in doubt, I'll continue to use the longer sentence eg. 'the wheels of or for the car' rather than the shorter 'car's wheels' although you say both are correct.

At least, I was spared the 'never say me'. I do agree that 'Me and Jane went to the shops' is wrong. So, too, is 'Jane and me went to the shops'. If you exclude 'and Jane' the sentence would read 'Me went to the shops' which is wrong. Hence 'Jane and I went to the shops' is right and the 'politeness rule' is satisfied as well. By the way, my old class master is still alive and alert at 88 years of age.

[Verbivore]

Indianjo: In the vein of debunking some of the rot you and I were taught at school, here is an amusing and informative "lost lecture" by Mark Forsyth.