I'm reading Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and I notice that she invariably uses an apostrophe with possessive pronouns — in a way that would be considered incorrect now. For example: (Elinor is speaking to Colonel Brandon)  My gratitude will be insured immediately by any information tending to that end, and her's must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it. (Volume II, Chapter IX, page 153 of the Oxford World's Classics edition, emphases in original)  Assuming that Austen is a reasonably good yardstick for proper style of her time, I'm wondering when this practice came to be considered incorrect. (Note that there are some related questions, especially . But that question's answers don't get into any real detail about the when part of the question.) Edit: @FumbleFingers points out in the comments that my example may be a bad one. In the original, the sentence would have had &quot;HERS&quot; (and no apostrophe). My larger point stands, and here are a few other examples without that problem:  When they stopped at the door, Mrs. Jennings recollected that there was a lady at the other end of the street on whom she ought to call; and as she had no business at Gray's, it was resolved, that while her young friends transacted their's, she should pay her visit and return for them. (Chapter 33) But at last she found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Steele, who, though looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting them, and on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of Mrs. Jennings, left her own party for a short time, to join their's. (Chapter 38) That conviction must be every thing to you; and he is undoubtedly supported by the same trust in your's. (Chapter 24)  Those examples are all taken from the . Edit after closing: It's funny that this should be closed so soon after the blog post about . The alleged duplicate does not talk about my question, namely when did good usage shift forms like her's, their's, etc. to hers, theirs, etc. Nor does the only answer to that question address the when question. That other question and its answer are about whether forms like hers came to exist by analogy with the possessive of nouns, such as John's. It's a completely different question. In addition, this question now has a reasonably good answer. There's no reason for this to be closed.
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If apostrophe + s is the acceptable way of denoting a genitive in English, is it possible that possessive pronouns, such as hers, ours and yours, started life as possessive adjectives with apostrophe + s?  E.g. her's, our's, your's, their's? Perhaps, even his' ? Its and my obviously stick out from this tempting pattern.  Is there any evidence that this might be the case, or is the 's completely unrelated?
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I was reading BBC culture page ( See  ). In the middle of the text, we see:  He became firm friends with the Shakespeare and Company owner in a relationship that lasted until his death 40 years later.  Q1: Does the writer make a mistake? Q2: Why has the writer used the plural form of &quot;friend&quot;?
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Observation: It seems that it's common to turn a store name into a possessive, for example a store named "Palisade" gets transformed to possessive in speech like, "Hey how about going to Palisade's for breakfast?" Another example is  in Seattle. Many (most?) store names do not get this treatment. It seems most common if the store name is:   Abstract: "I saw a great concert at BOOT's last night." A person's name, or what looks like a person's name: "I got this at JC Penney's" Totally unknown word: "I get my hair cut at Foofum's" [UPDATE] Is it ungrammatical to do this?   My assumption is that it's a short form of saying "BOOT's performance venue" (nonsensical though?), "JC Penney's shop", or "Foofum's salon".  Questions:   Is this common, or is it just my home town or something? Or my imagination? Why must we do this instead of simply calling the store by  rightful name? To me "I saw a concert last night at BOOT." is no less clear, and no more difficult to say.      a
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"Yours" is usually a possessive pronoun with an implicit noun. What is the implicit noun in the case of "yours sincerely"?
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I understand the rules for dual possessives, but I was writing and I realized that I have no idea how the following sentence should be written.  She and Kevin's house is big.  or  Her and Kevin's house is big.  Normally for a dual possessive, if there is joint possession (two people owning one thing), only the last noun takes the possessive form, but the first sentence sounds and reads awkwardly. Is it actually correct?  The pronoun seems to be the source of the confusion, as I would have no trouble choosing between the following:  Kim and Kevin's house is big. Kim's and Kevin's house is big.  The first would be correct because the house belongs to both Kim and Kevin, so only the last noun, "Kevin", takes the possessive form. Does the same rule apply when one of the nouns is a pronoun, or is there a different rule in such cases? Can someone help me out, please?  Note: I realize that there are similar discussions already:     However, these questions only discuss the proper formation of the first-person pronoun in such cases (i.e., "I" vs. "my"). I'm interested in the rules for correctly forming the third-person pronoun.
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To my knowledge, personal pronouns and the noun they represent can be inter-swapped. So both these sentences are correct. (I may be wrong, I'm not sure.)  "Unless she arrives here early, Susan will be fired."  "Unless Susan arrives here early, she will be fired."  However in the case of possessive pronouns is such a rule/ understanding also the same? My question is, simply put, must the noun be in the main clause always and the possessive pronoun in the subordinate clause? Are both iterations correct or is one more popular/grammatical than the other?  "Due to his poor memory, Richard forgot about the appointment."  "Due to Richard's poor memory, he forgot about the appointment."  One proponent suggested to me that the noun must always be in the main clause, since the main clause can stand alone as a sentence. Is this true? Anaphora or cataphora?
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gives some examples of correct use of &quot;even&quot; as an adverb to indicate that something is surprising or unexpected:-  &quot;She even forgot my birthday&quot; &quot;He can’t even spell his own name!&quot;  However, using &quot;even&quot; with &quot;to be&quot; results in some odd-sounding sentences:-  &quot;&quot; &quot;&quot;  And, (famously?)  &quot;&quot;  Adverbs usually come after auxiliary verbs, but in this case it doesn't seem like moving the adverb makes a more pleasing sentence:-  &quot;What is even that thing?&quot; &quot;What is that thing even?&quot;  Is there a correct way those sentences could even be formed, or should &quot;even&quot; not even be used with &quot;to be&quot;? As an additional point, these formations seem very common - especially colloquially or in writing on the internet. Is there anywhere I would be able to investigate the frequency of usage and perhaps find some early examples? EDIT:- For anyone interested, I found these:-     Suggesting that the use of &quot;even&quot; in this context is new/wrong, rather than specifically the pairing with &quot;to be&quot;, e,g:-  &quot;&quot; &quot;&quot; &quot;&quot;
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What is the best way to say this?     Because of yours and the John Wichel Foundation’s grant we are able to continue our mission to serve all Texans with diabetes.   Should it be      Because of your and John Wichel Foundation's grant, we are able . . .    OR   Because of yours and the John Wichel Foundation's grant, we are able . . .   It's a double possessive with the word your.  No matter how I write it, it doesn't sound right.
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I know that one can use "they" / "them" / "their" in place of "he" / "him" / "his" or "she" / "her" / "hers" when the subject's / direct object's gender is not known; for instance, just looking at the default user's about me section on Stack Exchange sites:     Apparently, this user prefers to keep an air of mystery about them   My question is what happens when someone wants to reference the subject using a pronoun instead.  Should the verb be conjugated accordingly to the pronoun? E.g.:     Apparently, they prefer to keep an air of mystery about them   Or should the conjugation be retained? E.g.:     Apparently, they prefers to keep an air of mystery about them   The former looks unclear because it wouldn't allow the reader / listener to understand if the writer / speaker is talking about a single person or about a group of people, however the latter sounds very weird, at least just to the non-native speaker which I am.
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Why does the place of the apostrophes differ in the following two titles?   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two's_complement en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ones'_complement   Which one is the correct?
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Consider the brief passage:     "I love your work, but calling you 'the artist' {1} just doesn't seem to be   cutting it anymore. What shall I call you?"      "OK. Call me George." {2}   So my instincts tell me to put {1} in single quotes as opposed to no punctuation (or perhaps even italics) but to do the opposite for {2}. Is this right? Why?  Let me expand this one further iteration:     "Wow, that's a great name, especially with this crowd. Maybe for your next book    you should call yourself Ringo."{3}
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If my understanding is correct, the  possessive personal pronouns (which are mine, thine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs) are used in place of nouns, whereas the possessive determiners (which are my, thy, your, his, her, its, our, and their) are used as adjectives.  If this is the case, then why is example 1 below correct, as opposed to example 2?   Whose book is this? It is mine.   Whose book is this? It is *my.
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When is it correct to create a contraction of words followed by is? For instance is who’s a correct short form of who is?
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Is there a definite rule about the use of articles with the possessive nouns in the plural? One rule says that the article in such a phrase modifies the possessive noun. So, it is correct to say "Peter's book' (not 'the Peter's book") because we do not say 'the Peter'. According to the same rule it's possible to say 'a cat's whiskers' because the article belongs to the word 'cat', not 'whiskers'.   But I've come across the following examples: 'a women's magazine'; 'a wolves' den'; 'a girls' school' and I realize that the article does not belong to the possessive noun any more.  It modifies the 'head'-word like in all ordinary noun phrases as 'an interesting magazine' or 'a prestigious school'. My head is broken, please, help!
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How to us possessive apostrophe with words in quotes? For example,   ...a few days later I discovered that those five little boys were not that well-behaved (as I firstly thought). In fact they were quite mischievous and conniving. The broken tree next to my house and the cat with its legs tied were all their "inventions". And Lilly, as it later turned out, was able to get to Denver so fast not without those "little inventors'" help.
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Where did the practice of using apostrophes for possessive nouns but not pronouns originate?  For example, possessive nouns (both proper and common) are written with a apostrophe before the final s:        Bill’s, not Bills   Sarah’s, not Sarahs   the bear’s, not the bears   the lizard’s, not the lizards      On the other hand, several possessive pronouns do not have apostrophes before the s:        his, not hi’s   hers, not her’s   its, not it’s   theirs, not their’s   ours, not our’s   yours, not your’s      When and where did this usage originate? Was there any technical advantage of this usage?
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I work with a company whose name is frequently reduced to an initialism (acronym).  Let's say the name is &quot;Cool Computer Systems&quot; (CCS).  I am engaged in an ongoing, bloody battle with the marketing department, wherein they insist the following apostrophe use is correct:  Buy CCS' New Product.  Reading that line brings visions of crying 4th grade teachers and librarians to mind.  I am quite certain that it should be written:  Buy CCS's New Product.   UPDATE: The examples are in title case because the sentence is the subject line of an e-mail.  UPDATE: Their argument is that &quot;Systems&quot; is plural.  I say that plurality doesn't matter, because &quot;Systems&quot; is part of the name.  The name as a whole should be handled as a singular entity, because the company is, in fact, a single, legal entity.  Thus, the possessive form should be written:  The Emperor's clothes Cool Computer Systems's clothes CSS's clothes