4 ms·

(NP and NP)'s sounds more natural to me than (NP's and NP's). We say "Jack and Jill's story", not "Jack's and Jill's story"

• rubergly 15y ago
  Grammar girl has an explanation [1] of the rule I've heard elsewhere and always followed---splitting it into "Jack's and Jill's" if they have separate and distinct things (so "Jack's and Jill's stories") and attaching the possessive to the compound entity if they share the item (so "Jack and Jill's story"). So in this case you're definitely correct about not splitting up the possession. I haven't been able to find anything authoritative to explain what to do when there is a pronoun involved, though I believe the correct form would be "my wife and my..." and not "my wife and I's". [1] http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-compound-possession.aspx http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-compound-posses...
  • baltcode 15y ago
    How do you differentiate between saying the project was a combined effort vs. talking about two distinct entities. eg., My wife and my projects were casualties of the war. Did the projects the two of you were working on destroyed in the war, or did you lose your wife and your projects?
    • delinka 15y ago
      I rewrite to avoid the ambiguity: My wife and I worked on projects that became casualties of the war.
  • ams6110 15y ago
    My rule of thumb is to say them out loud separately: My wife's weekend project My weekend project so... My wife's and my weekend project