Yesterday I was talking about recurrent mistakes with a fellow editor. I immediately reeled out the since vs. as problem, affect/effect, compliment/complement, lie and lay (as we said on Monday), whose and who's and so on. For some inexplicable reason I forgot to mention the Saxon Genitive (which I ranted about here) and also the classic and extremely annoying its vs. it's. Therefore I thought I would continue on the theme of uses and misuses this week with a few words from Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves on apostrophes that denote possession.
Before I do so, and in the interest of fairness which, at least on occasion, cannot hurt, the entire first chapter of this book is right here, courtesy of The New York Times, while a really good swipe at it is right here, from The New Yorker. And regardless of the latter, what Lynne Truss has to say in this section does hold true. Enjoy.
'It is time to confess that I have for many years struggled with one of the lesser rules of the apostrophe. I refer to the "double possessive", which is evidently a perfectly respectable grammatical construction, but simply jars with me, and perhaps always will. We see it all the time in newspapers:
"Elton John, a friend of the footballer's, said last night..."
"Elton John, a friend of the couple's, said last night..."
"Elton John, a friend of the Beckhams', said last night..."
Well, pass me the oxygen, Elton, and for heaven's sake, stop banging on about your glitzy mates for a minute while I think. A friend of the footballer's? Why isn't it, "a friend of the footballer"? Doesn't the construction "of the" do away with the need for another possessive? I mean to say, why do those sweet little Beckhams need to possess Elton John twice? Or is that a silly question?
But fight the mounting panic and turn to Robert Burchfield's third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage (1998), and what do I find? The double possessive is calmly explained, and I start to peel away the problem. Do I have any objection to the construction "a friend of mine" or "a friend of yours"? Well, no. I would never say "a friend of me" or "a friend of you". And yes, you would say "a cousin of my mother's", "a child of hers". Well, "a friend of the footballer's" is the same thing! The only time you drop the double possessive is when, instead of being involved with an animate being, you are "a lover of the British Museum", because obviously the British Museum does not – and never can – love you back.
We may be getting a little sick and tired of the apostrophe by now, so I'll just get a couple move things off my chest.
1- Someone wrote to say that my use of "one's" was wrong ("a common error"), and that it should be ones. This is such rubbish that I refuse to argue about it. Go and tell Virginia Woof that it should be A Room of Ones Own and see how far you get.
2- To reiterate, if you can replace the word with "it is" or "it has", the word is it's:
It's a long way to Tipperary.
If you can replace the word with "who is" or "who has", then the word is who's:
Who's that knocking at my door?
If you can replace the word with "they are", then the word is they're:
They're not going to get away with this.
And if you can replace the word with "there is", the word is there's:
There's a surprising amount about the apostrophe in this book.
If you can replace the word with "you are", then the word is you're:
You're never going to forget the difference between "its" and "it's".
We may curse out bad luck that it's sounds like its; who's sounds like whose; they're sounds like their (and there); there's sounds like theirs; and you're sounds like your. But if we are grown-ups who have been through full-time education, we have no excuse for muddling them up.
This chapter is nearing its end.
Whose book is this, again?
Some of their suggestions were outrageous!
This is no concern of theirs!
Your friend Elton John has been talking about you again.'
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