Tonight I was reading a book called "After the War" which is about what happens to various Civil War figures... well, you could probably guess... "after the war."
So I'm reading about Jefferson Davis and his daughter -- Daughter Winnie ended up engaged to a Northern lawyer whose father was an abolitionist and you can imagine how that went over. In fact, it went so badly and there was such a public outcry that the engagement was broken and Winnie never married and died at age 34 of a broken heart -- no, she actually died of malaria.
I am giving this long preface because Mary loves when I give a detailed preface for a simple question and go round and round and have parentheses inside parentheses... she believes it builds character to see how long she can go without screaming at me GET TO THE FRIGGING POINT!
Here's the point, frigging and otherwise:
One sentence read: Concerns about his health no doubt affected her's.
This was Winnie's bad health being affected by her father's bad health.
I stopped and looked at her's. Shouldn't that be hers? If you said, "This book is hers," it would be hers, not her's.
Am I right?
PS: And here is Winnie who had been dubbed The Daughter of the Confederacy because she would accompany her father on his speaking gigs and be introduced that way which made marrying a Northern son of an abolitionist nearly impossible. However Jefferson ended up liking the man, and eventually gave his consent to the marriage, but it never happened.
3 comments:
I've never seen her's written anywhere - hers is the only correct form. Are there any pronouns that don't have their own possessive form? I don't think so -- it's his book, the book is his, it's their book, the book is theirs, it's your book, the book is yours. I can't see why you'd ever add apostrophe s on a pronoun. so there - two of us at least believe that.
You's is right - make it three for HERS. Ain't ever seen an apostrophe w/ pronoun. Looks like a goof -- the very same way IT'S is misused for ITS. (Wonder if they were thinking HER'S replaced use of name Abigail's, which would call for apostrophe.)
One possessive-person pronoun observation I made while living in DC-- have heard several people use the possessive "MINE'S" as in "This house is mine's. He took mine's.... Ouch.
The it's/its thing makes me crazy. I remember in third grade? fourth grade? doing page after page in my English workbook where there would be 20 sentences and you had to indicate whether it was it's or its. Never seemed that difficult.
The one that gets me is something such as "Ladie's styles available." Aaarrrrrghhhh.
The other rule I remember from grade school days is when you capitalize Mom, Father, Mother, etc. And the rule was if you can substitute a proper name (Bill, Jane)for the word, then you cap it.
I can get old and farty about language usage.
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