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Forming Possessives
Showing possession in English is a relatively easy matter (believe it or not). By adding an apostrophe and an s we can manage to transform most singular nouns into their possessive form:
The City's population fell rapidly in the 19th century and through most of the 20th century as people moved outwards to London's vast suburbs and many houses were demolished to make way for modern office blocks. The largest residential section of the City today is the Barbican Estate, constructed between 1965 and 1976. Here a major proportion. King’s Bench (Coram Rege) Surviving documentation from the court of King’s Bench (Coram Rege) represents the side of the King or of the plaintiff only. Entries are in Latin, generally compressed, formulaic, and procedural. Heminges (1615) is the sole example of a King’s Bench suit among our Shakespeare documents. Written by Alan.
- the car's front seat
- Charles's car
- Bartkowski's book
- a hard day's work
Some writers will say that the -s after Charles' is not necessary and that adding only the apostrophe (Charles' car) will suffice to show possession. Consistency is the key here: if you choose not to add the -s after a noun that already ends in s, do so consistently throughout your text. William Strunk's Elements of Style recommends adding the 's. (In fact, oddly enough, it's Rule Number One in Strunk's 'Elementary Rules of Usage.') You will find that some nouns, especially proper nouns, especially when there are other -s and -z sounds involved, turn into clumsy beasts when you add another s: 'That's old Mrs. Chambers's estate.' In that case, you're better off with 'Mrs. Chambers' estate.'
There is another way around this problem of klunky possessives: using the 'of phrase' to show possession. For instance, we would probably say the 'constitution of Illinois,' as opposed to 'Illinois' (or Illinois's ??) constitution.'
To answer that question about Illinois, you should know that most words that end in an unpronounced 's' form their possessive by adding an apostrophe + s. So we would write about 'Illinois's next governor' and 'Arkansas's former governor' and 'the Marine Corps's policy.' However, many non-English words that end with a silent 's' or 'x' will form their possessives with only an apostrophe. So we would write 'Alexander Dumas' first novel' and 'this bordeaux' bouquet.' According to the New York Public Library's Guide to Style and Usage, there are 'certain expressions that end in s or the s sound that traditionally require an apostrophe only: for appearance' sake, for conscience' sake, for goodness' sake' (268). Incidentally, the NYPL Guide also suggests that when a word ends in a double s, we're better off writing its possessive with only an apostrophe: the boss' memo, the witness' statement. Many writers insist, however, that we actually hear an 'es' sound attached to the possessive forms of these words, so an apostrophe -s is appropriate: boss's memo, witness's statement. If the look of the three s's in a row doesn't bother you, use that construction.
When we want the possessive of a pluralized family name, we pluralize first and then simply make the name possessive with the use of an apostrophe. Thus, we might travel in the Smiths' car when we visit the Joneses (members of the Jones family) at the Joneses' home. When the last name ends in a hard 'z' sound, we usually don't add an 's' or the '-es' and simply add the apostrophe: 'the Chambers' new baby.'
| Many writers consider it bad form to use apostrophe -s possessives with pieces of furniture and buildings or inanimate objects in general. Instead of 'the desk's edge' (according to many authorities), we should write 'the edge of the desk' and instead of 'the hotel's windows' we should write 'the windows of the hotel.' In fact, we would probably avoid the possessive altogether and use the noun as an attributive: 'the hotel windows.' This rule (if, in fact, it is one) is no longer universally endorsed. We would not say 'the radio of that car' instead of 'that car's radio' (or the 'car radio') and we would not write 'the desire of my heart' instead of 'my heart's desire.' Writing 'the edge of the ski' would probably be an improvement over 'the ski's edge,' however. For expressions of time and measurement, the possessive is shown with an apostrophe -s: 'one dollar's worth,' 'two dollars' worth,' 'a hard day's night,' 'two years' experience,' 'an evening's entertainment,' and 'two weeks' notice' (the title of the Hollywood movie nothwithstanding). |
Remember that personal pronouns create special problems in the formation of possessives. See the chart of Noun and Pronoun Cases.
Possessives & Gerunds
Possessive forms are frequently modifiers for verb forms used as nouns, or gerunds. Using the possessive will affect how we read the sentence. For instance, 'I'm worried about Joe running in the park after dark' means that I'm worried about Joe and the fact that he runs in the park after dark (the word 'running' is a present participle modifying Joe). On the other hand, 'I'm worried about Joe's running in the park after dark' puts the emphasis on the running that Joe is doing ('running' is a gerund, and 'Joe's' modifies that verbal). Usually, almost always in fact, we use the possessive form of a noun or pronoun to modify a gerund. More is involved, however. Click HERE for further information about using the possessive form with gerunds.
Possessives versus Adjectival Labels
Don't confuse an adjectival label (sometimes called an 'attributive noun') ending in s with the need for a possessive. Sometimes it's not easy to tell which is which. Do you attend a writers' conference or a writers conference? If it's a group of writers attending a conference, you want the plural ending, writers. If the conference actually belongs to the writers, then you'd want the possessive form, writers'. If you can insert another modifer between the -s word and whatever it modifies, you're probably dealing with a possessive. Additional modifiers will also help determine which form to use.
- Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe threw three touchdown passes. (plural as modifier)
- The Patriots' [new] quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, threw three touchdown passes. (possessive as modifier]
Possessives of Plurals & Irregular Plurals
Most plural nouns already end in s. To create their possessive, simply add an apostrophe after the s:
- The Pepins' house is the big blue one on the corner.
- The lions' usual source of water has dried up.
- The gases' odors mixed and became nauseating.
- The witches' brooms were hidden in the corner.
- The babies' beds were all in a row.
With nouns whose plurals are irregular (see Plurals), however, you will need to add an apostrophe followed by an s to create the possessive form.
- She plans on opening a women's clothing boutique.
- Children's programming is not a high priority.
- The geese's food supply was endangered.
(But with words that do not change their form when pluralized, you will have to add an -s or -es.)
- The seaweed was destroyed by the fishes' overfeeding.
Holidays Showing Possession
A number of American Holidays have possessive forms, and are peculiarly inconsistent. 'Mother's Day' and 'Father's Day' are easy enough, one parent at a time, and 'Parents' Day' is nicely pluralized, as is 'Presidents' Day' which celebrates the birthdays of both Washington and Lincoln. 'All Souls' Day (Halloween),' of course, takes a plural possessive. 'Veterans Day' is plural but not possessive, for historical reasons shrouded in mystery. Martin Luther King Jr. Day has no possessive. 'New Year's Day,' 'St. Valentine's Day,' St. Patrick's Day,' and 'April Fool's Day' all have their singular prossessive form, and so, while we're at it, does 'Season's Greetings.' Note that 'Daylight Saving Time' is neither possessive nor plural.
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.'
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- 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).
Possessives & Compound Constructions
This is different from the problem we confront when creating possessives with compound constructions such as daughter-in-law and friend of mine. Generally, the apostrophe -s is simply added to the end of the compound structure: my daughter-in-law's car, a friend of mine's car. If this sounds clumsy, use the 'of' construction to avoid the apostrophe: the car of a friend of mine, etc. This is especially useful in pluralized compound structures: the daughters-in-law's car sounds quite strange, but it's correct. We're better off with the car of the daughters-in-law. See the section on Compound Nouns and Modifiers for additional help.
Possessives with Appositive Forms
When a possessive noun is followed by an appositive, a word that renames or explains that noun, the apostrophe +s is added to the appositive, not to the noun. When this happens, we drop the comma that would normally follow the appositive phrase.
- We must get Joe Bidwell, the family attorney's signature.
Create such constructions with caution, however, as you might end up writing something that looks silly:
- I wrecked my best friend, Bob's car.
You're frequently better off using the 'of-genitive' form, writing something like 'We must get the signature of Joe Bidwell, the family attorney' and 'I wrecked the car of my best friend, Bob.'
Double Possessives
Do we say 'a friend of my uncle' or 'a friend of my uncle's'? In spite of the fact that 'a friend of my uncle's' seems to overwork the notion of possessiveness, that is usually what we say and write. The double possessive construction is sometimes called the 'post-genitive' or 'of followed by a possessive case or an absolute possessive pronoun' (from the Oxford English Dictionary, which likes to show off). The double possessive has been around since the fifteenth century, and is widely accepted. It's extremely helpful, for instance, in distinguishing between 'a picture of my father' (in which we see the old man) and 'a picture of my father's' (which he owns). Native speakers will note how much more natural it is to say 'He's a fan of hers' than 'he's a fan of her.'
Generally, what follows the 'of' in a double possessive will be definite and human, not otherwise, so we would say 'a friend of my uncle's' but not 'a friend of the museum's [museum, instead].' What precedes the 'of' is usually indefinite (a friend, not the best friend), unless it's preceded by the demonstratives this or that, as in 'this friend of my father's.'
Authority for the section on 'double possessives': The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press. Examples our own.
Plural and Possessive Forms
Irregular Plurals and Non-Count Nouns
Possessives and Irregular Plurals
The Emergence of Formal Government: The twelfth century saw a shift across northwestern Europe from the predominantly local, informal power arrangements typical of customary law to formal government organized along bureaucratic lines. In England the key reign was that of Henry II (1154-89), when the royal treasury (the Exchequer) and permanent royal courts (the Courts of the King’s Bench and of Common Pleas) became established in Westminster, a suburb of London. Previously the king’s court had been itinerant, i.e., it met wherever the king happened to be. The creation of these permanent institutions was part of Henry’s thorough re-organization of royal justice, which expanded both geographically throughout the country and socially, across all classes from freemen (see below) up to the highest-ranking nobles—previously the only ones to have regular recourse to the king’s court. Serfs, however, were still excluded. Despite this initial exclusion, royal justice gradually undermined the independence of local lords, whose men, both noble vassals and serfs, increasingly escaped lordly control as they sought the right to take their cases directly to the royal courts.
Freemen: In-between lords and serfs were freemen. Though still often recognizing a local lord’s authority in military and judicial matters, freemen held some of their lands ‘freely’ and leased other lands from landlords, but in return for rent payments rather than any kind of personal service. Probably not very numerous before ca. 1200 CE, freemen thereafter expanded as a social category, absorbing all of the former serfs by the end of the Middle Ages (ca. 1500 CE). As feudalism and manorialism declined over the later Middle Ages, the class of freemen and freely-held property both gradually became the new normal. These two aspects of ‘freedom,’ personal and tenurial, developed in tandem with the rise of the state, because both required a central authority capable of guaranteeing ordinary people’s rights, as Magna Carta suggests was already beginning to be the case by 1215.
The Birth of Common Law. The expanded system of royal justice that emerged in the late 1100s and the norms it upheld came to be called the ‘Common Law,’ which at first meant simply the law that was the same, or ‘common,’ throughout the country, as opposed to the diversity of regional or local law. Yet this emerging body of national law did not set out to change legal norms themselves; instead the Common Law was conservative in terms of the substantive law, incorporating without radical change many of the customary norms of the law of crime, family, property, and inheritance. The Common Law was very innovative, however, in terms of procedure: it emphasized written documentation (focused above all on royal ‘writs,’ on which see below), the peaceful resolution of disputes, the use of local juries to establish both law and fact, and a clear hierarchy of courts.
Common Law as Customary or Case Law. The key feature of both English and American versions of Common Law is their heavy reliance on judicial precedent, or case law, as a means of determining what the law is. Because judicial decisions tend both to recognize tradition and to adjust incrementally to evolving social values and popular understandings, Common Law may be understood as a sophisticated type of customary law, notwithstanding its use of written documentation.
Common Law vs Civil Law, etc. As the foundation of the legal traditions of English-speaking countries, Common Law is often contrasted with the Civil Law traditions of continental Europe, which like their Roman law model are based on theoretically comprehensive ‘legal codes,’ and which (again in theory) leave judges with less discretion in deciding cases. Within Anglophone countries, Common Law in the sense of customary or case law may be contrasted with both statutory law, the law set out by legislative statutes, and, more recently, with regulatory law (the regulations made by executive branch agencies). Historically, this ‘judge-made law’ (sometimes described pejoratively as ‘legislating from the bench’) preceded statutory law in the modern sense by about a century, because England’s first distinct legislative institution emerged only with the establishment of Parliament under Edward I (1272-1307). Despite these contrasts, however, case law also overlaps with statutory and regulatory law, because some laws and regulations merely codify existing practice. Conversely, many statutes or regulations that are at first innovative eventually become incorporated into judicial precedents and customary understandings.
The Grand Jury and the Possessory Assizes
A) The Grand Jury: The Assize of Clarendon, 1166
Henry II’s most important innovation may have been the establishment of the Grand Jury, which created a coherent system for prosecuting crime based on the cooperation of local communities with royal judges (or ‘justices’) and the central royal courts. This edict describes its basic operation.
[1] “King Henry, by the counsel of all his barons, for the preservation of peace and the observing of justice, has decreed that an inquest shall be made throughout the separate counties, and throughout the separate hundreds [subdivisions of the county], through twelve of the more lawful men of the hundred, and through four of the more lawful men of each township, who upon oath will speak the truth about: whether in their hundred or in their township there is any man who…is publicly reputed as being a robber or murderer or thief; or anyone who harbors robbers or murderers or thieves. And both the [itinerant royal] Justices and the sheriffs shall make inquests in this way. [Then the accused must answer]…
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[11] “No one in a city or borough or castle or elsewhere shall forbid the sheriffs from coming into their land or soc [area of jurisdiction] to take those who have been charged or publicly reputed as being robbers or murderers or thieves…
[18] “And all sheriffs shall cause a register to be kept of all fugitives who shall flee from their counties; and this they shall do before the county assemblies. They shall write down and carry their names to the Justices, so that they may be sought for throughout all England, and their chattels [moveable goods] may be taken for the service of the king.”
B) The Writ of Mort d’Ancestor, Northampton, 1176
The reforms that directly concerned property law (known as the possessory assizes) were based on the use of royal writs, brief written orders from the king—though actually written by his officials—to initiate lawsuits. A number of stereotyped writs that resemble fill-in-the-blank forms were developed, each of which addressed a common type of legal case. Any freeman could purchase a writ to start a lawsuit against another party, for example to recover property. By this means the royal courts could handle different kinds of legal business for a wide range of litigants. The two key writs excerpted here are often credited with undermining lordly power and helping to create something more like modern property rights. The first, the writ of Mort d’Ancestor, began a legal action concerning inheritance upon the death of one’s predecessor.
[1] “If any freeholder has died, let his heirs remain possessed of such seisin [lawful possession] as their father had in his fee [fief or landed estate] on the day of his death; and let them have his chattels [moveable property] from which they may execute the dead man’s will. And afterwards let them seek out his lord and pay him a relief [inheritance tax] and the other things which they ought to pay him from the fee. [2] And if the heir be under age, let the lord of the fee receive his homage [promise of fidelity or vassalage] and keep him in wardship [guardianship] so long as he ought… [3] And let the widow of the deceased have her dower and that portion of his chattels which belongs to her.
[4] “And if the lord of the fee denies the heirs of the deceased the seisin they claim, the king’s justices should call an inquisition to be made by twelve lawful men as to what seisin the deceased held on the day of his death. And according to the result of the inquest let restitution be made to his heirs. And if anyone shall do anything contrary to this and shall be convicted of it, let him remain at the king’s mercy.”
C) The Writ of Novel Disseisin, 1189
This writ, or royal order, began a legal action to reverse a recent dispossession. It constituted one of the two key methods by which the king rapidly extended his jurisdiction over virtually all property disputes (except those among serfs, who would remain subject to their manorial lords for another century or two). Together with the Grand Jury and the writ of Mort d’Ancestor, it helped to outlaw virtually all non-royal acts of violence. It thus gave the royal government what Max Weber considered an essential attribute of any effective state: a monopoly over (legitimate) violence. This writ is first described in the first textbook of the new Common Law, known as Glanvill, which was written in about 1189, in ch. 13:
“The king to the sheriff, greeting. —[name of plaintiff]— has complained to me that ——[name of accused]—unjustly and without a judgment has disseised [dispossessed] him of his free tenement [landed estate] in —-[name of place]—–. Therefore I command you that, if the plaintiff gives you security for prosecuting his claim, you are to see that the chattels [moveable property] which were taken from the tenement are restored to it, and that the tenement and the chattels remain in peace until —[date]—. And meanwhile you are to see that the tenement is viewed by twelve free and lawful men of the neighborhood, and that their names are endorsed on this writ. And summon them to appear before my justices on —[date]—, ready to make their recognition [testimony], together with the accused or his bailiff [representative] if he himself cannot be found.”