Level: beginner
We add 's to singular nouns to show possession:
We are having a party at John's house.
Michael drove his friend's car.
We add ' to plural nouns ending in -s:
This is my parents' house.
Those are ladies' shoes.
But we use 's with irregular plural nouns:
| men | women | children | people |
These are men's shoes.
Children's clothes are very expensive.
We can use a possessive instead of a full noun phrase to avoid repeating words:
Is that John's car?
No, it's Mary's. (NOT No, it's Mary's [car].)Whose coat is this?
It's my wife's. (NOT It's my wife's [coat].)
- Possessives: nouns 1
- Possessives: nouns 2
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Hello zainab Shah
Is this perhaps homework? We're teachers here at LearnEnglish and believe that homework is important, so we're not keen on answering such questions.
One rule that might help you is that when the possessor is a person, animal or group of people, we usually use 's instead of the word of to indicate possession. This means that sentence 3 should be 'The boy's cap is red', for example, and in 4 you should say 'bird's nest'.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello soniae
Yes, it is. We tend to use the possessive s when the possessor is a person or animal or some kind of group of living beings (e.g. a country, a government or a school).
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Tara
I would recommend avoiding the issue by saying 'The role of the protagonist, Bob, is diverse' or 'The protagonist's role is diverse. For example, Bob ...'
If you do an internet search for 'possessives with appositive forms' or something similar, you can find people making different suggestions about this sort of issue. I'm not a trained professional editor, but I think many would make the same recommendation I have.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Aislin,
In the sentence you cite, 'his' is a possessive adjective (it modifies 'friend'), not a demonstrative pronoun. Both of the sentences you ask about are grammatically correct, but couldn't just replace the one you asked about. If you used the first one, for example, 'the' implies that the friend hasn't been identified and 'a' implies that the friend hasn't been mentioned yet.
Does that help you make sense of it?
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kapel,
The compound noun 'car keys' is the correct form here. This is simply the way native speakers have come to speak about this item that is so important for so many of us.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello asr09,
Yes, both of those sentences are fine. You can have multiple possessives in one sentence, though you need to be careful that the sentence does not become hard to follow. Two possessives is certainly fine, but more than that is unusual.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Lucie,
I understand the person's name is Cerys. In this case both forms are possible. In the same way we can say either of these:
Best wishes,
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi joory hoory,
You need to look at the example sentence and decide if the sentence is talking about one person or more than one.
Best wishes,
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team