Possessives

“… and if you’re school is near by, …”

Apostrophes, Common English Blunders, Contractions, Mispronunciations, Possessives, Pronouns

My wife got this in an email message recently.

Problem:
The word “you’re” is incorrect here.

Explanation:
The complete sentence in the message was “Please contact me and if you’re school is near by, I may be able to deliver them to you.”

The word “you’re” — spelled Y-O-U-APOSTROPHE-R-E — is a contraction of “you are”.

Clearly, the message writer did not intend to say “… and if you are school is near by, …”; that would be nonsensical.

Instead, the writer was referring to the reader’s school, so he should have used the possessive pronoun “your” — spelled Y-O-U-R.

I believe that the common English blunder of confusing the contraction “you’re” with the possessive pronoun “your” is due to the fact that many American English speakers mistakenly pronounce these two words in the same way.

Solution:
“… and if your school is near by, …”

“Malaria has touched their own lives.”

Adjectives, Possessives

I have repeatedly heard this in an ExxonMobil TV commercial running during the 2008 Olympics coverage.

Problem:
The adjective does not belong in the sentence.

Explanation:
The word “own” has two meanings as an adjective.

The first definition of “own” is pertaining to itself or oneself, and the adjective “own” in this usage typically follows a possessive — such as “their” — to highlight the sense of ownership of that possessive.

This relates to an essentially reflexive use of “own”, as in “They earned their own money.”

The second use of “own” is as an intensifier to emphasize that the subject is the one and only actor, and the adjective “own” in this usage always follows a possessive.

This relates to an essentially intensifying use of “own”, as in “They insisted on being their own contractors.”

Unfortunately, the sentence “Malaria has touched their own lives.” calls for the adjective “own” in neither of these ways.

  • It does NOT match the first usage because malaria is not acting reflexively in the sentence.
  • It does NOT match the second usage because “own” does not emphasize in the sentence that the subject is the one and only agent of the “touched” action.

I fear that this form of misuse of “own” is a side effect of the increasing misuse of reflexive pronouns, as in “I am fine. And yourself (sic)?”, and as in “Please send it to Jim and myself.”

Solution:
“Malaria has touched their lives.”

“HIS & HER’S WALK-IN CLOSET”

Possessives, Pronouns

I saw this yesterday in a real-estate advertisement.

Problem:
“HER’S” is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
The pronoun “her” is:

  • the objective case of the pronoun “she” (e.g., “Give this green handbag to her.”);
  • the possessive case of the pronoun “she” used as an attributive adjective (e.g., “Her handbag is the green one.”);
  • the dative case of the pronoun “she” (e.g., “I gave her the green handbag.”).

The pronoun “hers” is a a form of the possessive case of the pronoun “she” used as a predicate adjective (e.g., “The green handbag is hers.”).

In contrast, “her’s” is a nonsense word.

The woman who wrote the real-estate ad meant to say that the walk-in closet was suitable for a man and a woman simultaneously, and she could have used “her” or “hers”:

  • Using “HIS-&-HER” would have meant that she wanted to say that the walk-in closet would be equally possessed by the man and woman.
  • Using “HIS-&-HERS” would have meant that she wanted to say that the walk-in closet had a “his” area and a “hers” area.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks to avoid modified forms) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “hers” — 23,800,000 matches
  • “her’s” — 1,290,000 matches

Although some of the “hers” matches related to acronyms (e.g., for Higher Education Resource Services), this still tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of some 18.4:1, which is okay, but the fact that the Web contains more than one million instances of “her’s” is disappointing.

Solutions:
“HIS-&-HER WALK-IN CLOSET”
or
“HIS-&-HERS WALK-IN CLOSET”