A grammar question

[jobuni]

Many of you know I can be a bit of a grammar nazi, especially about apostrophes. This morning however I have a bit of a quandry about plural possesives. Most of the time the apostrophe will go after the 's' as in "The dogs' bones" where there are multiple dogs with multiple bones. An exception would be where there is a seperate word for the

Comments

[sera_squeak]

I *think* it would always be "the sheep's dinner" bearing in mind that you don't have sheeps.

[jobuni]

That does make sense and I think you're probably right, but it annoys me because it leaves it ambiguous when you come to the number of sheep involved.

I'm sure there must be a joke in there somewhere about multiple involved sheep.

[evildrganymede]

I'd say "sheep's dinner" if it's one sheep, and "sheeps' dinner" if it's more than one. Or possibly even "sheeps' dinners" since there's more than one dinner too.

And never believe spell-checkers, they can't possibly know every nuance of the english language (especially if they're American ones ;) ).

[jobuni]

Damn right ;o)

But it does appear that as "sheep" can be a plural word you never write "sheeps'". How annoying.

[standp]

I love that someone else has this degree of concern for the rampant apostrophe abuse out there. I've noticed lately though, that rather than misusing apostrophes, people have now started to drop them entirely, possibly as a result of texting economization. And/or laziness.

In answer to your question, when I run across such a complication, I usually just find a way to restructure my sentence to avoid the conundrum altogether.
:-)

[jobuni]

Restructuring would indeed be the easiest option *g*

I haven't noticed people dropping the poor apostrophe all together. More often I see people putting one in before every single "s", sometimes even when it is not a plural. "ARGH! An S! Must use apostrophe!" *sigh*...