I’m Positive…

This follows on from me tagging a friend in Facebook with an apostrophe-related meme… She has apostrophe problems and we tease her about it occasionally.  I hadn’t for ages, so when this image came up, I couldn’t help it.


I neglected to suggest that she learn Japanese and communicate exclusively in that instead - no apostrophes!!! すごいですね。A missed opportunity, obviously. 

In revenge, I mean, in return, she asked for help with an issue currently plaguing her (she works in healthcare).  “Question - in the phrase "surgical fellows weekend", would fellows have an apostrophe.  The group of surgical fellows are going for a weekend away together for training.”  

Another friend answered far more clearly and helpfully than I would have and even shared a useful link… “you could make the case either way. Without the apostrophe “fellows” is functioning as an attributive noun, with the apostrophe it’s a possessive noun. https://getitwriteonline.com/possessives-vs-attributive-nouns/“

So, I felt moved to share the following about rephrasing things to avoid using apostrophes at all and then throw a few other grammar terms in just for good measure :D. Not necessarily in that order…

“Friend 2, I only learned the term appositive recently when this semester’s sensei was appalled that none of us knew the term/meaning when asking about other uses/meanings of の… it is a little like how our Latin teacher was appalled that none of us knew what a gerund was when it was time to teach that grammar point… she said she was going to go and “have a word” with our English teacher after the lesson 😀  


So far, they’ve carefully stayed away from the very existence of の adjectives and the attributive form being different 😀


Friend 1, almost every sentence that you might worry about whether you are getting the apostrophe correct in can be solved by rephrasing the sentence to say “of”. And it works for both cases in your example - it is the weekend of (the) surgical fellows. Could be possessive, could be attributive 😀. Definitely not appositive though. The weekend is not equal to the surgical fellows (even if some of them are A positive… ;)).”


So far, that’s two languages that I have been learning and learned something new about English grammar and grammar terms from. 


And look!  Everyone got a bonus bad pun there too! 

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