Compound Possessive Nouns

There have been times that I have been confused about how to use the possessive forms of nouns when I have a compound possessive-noun situation. Do I make both nouns have the apostrophe "s" ('s) on the end or just the 2nd noun? I decided that I would check it out. Read below for more information.

Compound Possessives

When you are showing possession with compounded nouns, the apostrophe's placement depends on whether the nouns are acting separately or together.

* Miguel's and Cecilia's new cars are in the parking lot.
This means that each of them has at least one new car and that their ownership is a separate matter.
* Miguel and Cecilia's new cars are in the parking lot.
This construction tells us that Miguel and Cecilia share ownership of these cars. The possessive (indicated by 's) belongs to the entire phrase, not just to Cecilia.

Another example:

* Lewis and Clark's expectations were very much the same.
This construction tells us that the two gentlemen held one set of expectations in common.
* Lewis's and Clark's expectations were altogether different.
This means that the expectations of the two men were different (rather obvious from what the sentence says, too). We signify separate ownership by writing both of the compounded proper nouns in the possessive form.

When one of the possessors in a compound possessive is a personal pronoun, we have to put both possessors in the possessive form or we end up with something silly: "Bill and my car had to be towed last night."

* Bill's and my car had to be towed last night.
* Giorgio's and her father was not around much during their childhood.

If this second sentence seems unsatisfactory, you might have to do some rewriting so you end up talking about their father, instead, or revert to using both names: "Giorgio and Isabel's father wasn't around much . . . ." (and then "Giorgio" will lose the apostrophe +s).

For more information please see this site. This is the site I used as a reference for this posting

More Grammar Help

Those Old Adjectives--Using Comparative or Superlative Form

Today is a busy posting day for me. Sometimes, I find myself questioning the way I use English grammar. An example of this is that I have 2 sons. I would refer to Son #1 as the oldest and #2 as the youngest. That isn't quite right. #1 is the older and #2 is the younger. Comparing two things requires the use of the comparative form of an adjective (such as older and younger). If I had 3 sons then I would us the -est suffix on the adjective to compare the #1 son to the #3-- this is the superlative form of the adjective. Clear as mud right??? Here is a video that may explain it to you a little better than I have. You may want to turn the music player off(it's in the other column) before you listen to this video. Hope you enjoy!

Comparative and Superlative adjectives

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How to Use the Words "Well" and "Good"

Sometimes I have confusion over when to use the words "well" and "good." I know that I am not the only with this problem, I hear these 2 words used interchangeably quite often. Here's the lowdown on how to correctly use each of these words.

• good-- is an adjective. It modifies/describes a noun. Now most of us can probably remember from elementary school that a noun is a person, place or thing. OK, then we have good girls, good schools, good parents, good food and that sort of thing. "That is good fried chicken."


• well--an adverb. Well is used to describe a verb, you know an action word. He swam well. She did well on the test. Well is a word that may be used to describe health such as "I feel well after the operation."

Confusion over i.e. and e.g. resolved

I often have problems figuring out when to use e.g. and i.e. when writing. Here is a quick explanation that helped me out.

e.g.
e.g. stands for the Latin phrase “exempli gratia,” which means “for the sake of example.” You should use it when presenting examples or more possibilities for the term in question. An easy way to remember this is to associate e.g. with “example given.” "The student was causing problems e.g throwing paper wads and talking in class."

i.e.
i.e. Stands for the Latin phrase “id est,” which means “that is.” You should use it when explaining or rephrasing a sentence. Usually it has the same meaning as “in other words.” "The student was causing problems i.e. not obeying class rules."

07-24-2008 Grammar Hint for Crocheters

Greeting crocheters! When finishing up our beautiful crochet projects, one of the last things we do is weave in the loose ends. I had questions about the past tense of "to weave." It turns out that "to weave" is an irregular verb. This means, you don't necessarily slap a "d" or an "ed" on the end of the word to make it past tense. The correct past tense is "wove" or in the case of past participle "woven" or "wove." The regular imperfect and past participle weaved is not commonly used. I actually broke out the dictionary for this one!