by Jennie Ruby
Lately I've been hearing a lot of people use expressions like Jennie and I's house. The most alarming use, perhaps, was in a sentence very much like this one: "All of the editing and proofing is handled by Jennie and I's department." When the head of the editing department struggles with a grammatical issue, you know it is a bad one.
As I discussed last week, having a person's name and a personal pronoun in the same sentence seems to make our normal ear for grammar go out the window. Surely no head of an editing department would ever say "I's department." So the solution to this problem is just about the same as the solution I offered last week: leave the other person's name out, choose your correct pronoun, and then add the other person back in: "Jennie and my department.*"
However, that is not quite where the grammar books leave us [my source is The Gregg Reference Manual]. We need to also make sure that it is clear that Jennie also has ownership of the department.
Separate possession with two names:
Jane's and Sam's cars are in the parking lot.
[They own separate cars.]
Joint possession with two names:
Jane and Sam's car is in the parking lot.
[They co-own one car. Think of this as taking the phrase Jane and Sam and adding an apostrophe-s to it.]
Joint possession with one name and one pronoun:
Jane's and his car is in the parking lot.
[They co-own one car, but since the pronoun "his" doesn't really apply to Jane, you have to add an apostrophe s to her name to make it clear that she is also one of the owners.]
Separate possession with one name and one pronoun:
Jane's and his cars are in the parking lot.
[Notice that this looks the same as joint possession, but the use of plural for cars makes it clear that they each have a separate car.]
So the right way to say the problem sentence we started with?
All of the editing and proofing is handled by Jennie's and my department.
Note: The asterisk (*) indicates an example illustrating incorrect grammar or usage.
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
Simple, when you think about it. The problem is two-fold. 1. behavioural - people decreasingly expressing their thoughts at length, which means they don't face having to think through what they say or write. 2. attitudinal - egocentric communication "I know what I mean".
Posted by: Max | June 26, 2011 at 06:52 AM