Possessives

“Drywall Finisher’s”

Apostrophes, Common English Blunders, Nouns, Possessives

I saw this a week ago on a pickup truck.

Problem:
A possessive apostrophe appeared where it should not.

Explanation:
“Drywall Finisher’s” — with an apostrophe before the letter “s” — was the title on a magnetic sign attached to the side of a pickup truck that I saw last week.

The contractor’s telephone number and some other information appeared beneath the title.

Because the APOSTROPHE-S made the word “Finisher” a possessive, I had to wonder what was being possessed.

But I was left hanging.

The apostrophe in “Finisher’s” should not have been there.

The sign maker was trying to pluralize the noun “Finisher”.

He or she instead made the sign maker’s common blunder of inserting a possessive apostrophe when pluralizing a noun.

Maybe sign makers just love to create apostrophes?

Solution:
“Drywall Finishers”

Why do people pluralize company names?

Plurals, Possessives

I hear and see a lot of pluralization of company names.

Here are some examples.

Many people pluralize J.D. Power and Associates as “J.D. Powers” — as in, “They won the J.D. Powers award three times.”

Many people pluralize Barnes & Noble as “Barnes & Nobles” — as in, “Did you see that book at Barnes & Nobles?”

Many people pluralize Kroger as “Krogers” — as in, “I am going to Krogers. Do you need anything?”

And what sounds sometimes like a possessive-apostrophe-“s” is often written simply with an “s”, so I know that not everyone is trying to make the name into a possessive.

“I went through your guys’s notes.”

Apostrophes, Possessives

I heard this yesterday morning on National Public Radio.

Problem:
The possessive form was wrong.

Explanation:
An NPR reporter had recorded someone saying to a group of people, “I went through your guys’s notes.”

Without any more context to help you, you can see that there are two possible interpretations for this statement:

  1. The speaker was saying that he had read the notes of the guys who belonged to or were associated with his listeners.
  2. The speaker was saying that he had read the notes that belonged to his listeners.

If the full context were such that interpretation #1 were correct, then the solution would be to remove the final “s” from “guys’s” in the statement.

However, the full context of the recording was someone speaking directly to a group and not referring to anyone else.

So interpretation #2 is the correct one.

One can then almost see the train of thought of the speaker when he started to say, “I went through your guys’s notes.”

Step 1: The speaker usually says “you guys” instead of “you” for the plural, second-person pronoun.

Step 2: Starting to make a possessive out of “you guys”, the speaker changed “you” to “yours”.

Step 3: Realizing that “your guys” sounded as if he were referring to people other than his listeners, the speaker added the possessive apostrophe-“s” to “guys” to create “your guys’s”.

Now here is the sad part about this NPR report: The man who was recorded saying the statement “I went through your guys’s notes.” was directly involved in a job-interviewing activity.

Ouch!

Solution:
“I went through your notes.”