The Vine: August 2, 2007
Hi Sars,
My younger sister recently got in a knock-down, drag-out argument with a TV journalist friend of hers regarding a phrase he used in a Facebook message. Because I am widely considered the language geek of the family, she came to me to settle it.
I wrote the two of them a fairly detailed, lucid explanation outlining the reasons why the friend’s usage was wrong, but because most of my grammatical terms were learned in French growing up, my understanding of English rules tends to be more organic (i.e.: the result of extensive reading) than it is technical. I can explain myself reasonably well in a grammar debate, but words like “modifier” and “independent clause” sometimes throw me off-balance.
Because this 20-something kid behaved like such a smug little prat toward my sister throughout the whole thing (and I quote: “You stick to taking care of babies [my sister is a neo-natal nurse], and I’ll handle the English language”), and because he dared to make the claim that “all the journalists in his office” agreed with him on this (!), I would like to ask you two favours:
1) Confirm for me that my sister and I are correct
2) Compose your response using some of that fancy grammar-speak (preferably with some Strunk & White-type back-up) so I can deliver your final, authoritative word to them both
This was the sentence the friend originally used: “What are yours and Jamie’s plans for the weekend?”
At which point my sister told him it should be: “What are your and Jamie’s plans for the weekend?” I agreed with this, and cited something about the correlation between subject and object, the “you and me” vs. “you and I” rule, and so forth. I couldn’t find a reference to tell me exactly what the grammatical issue is with his usage, though.
So…can you back us up?
Sincerely,
Journalists Aren’t Necessarily The Final Word On Grammar. And I Should Know, I Was One.
Dear Let’s Leave That To Garner,
It depends. It’s not clear from the example whether the inquiry was about plans that “you” and Jamie had together, or plans that you had and plans that Jamie had — and which version of the phrasing is correct depends on that.
Here’s Garner:
E. Joint Possessives: John and Mary’s house. For joint possession, an apostrophe goes with the last element in a series. If you put an apostrophe with each element in the series, you signal individual possession. E.g.:
John and Mary’s house. (Joint)
John’s and Mary’s houses. (Individual)
America and England’s interests. (Joint)
America’s and England’s interests. (Individual)
This is fairly straightforward; I suspect the issue in your situation is that “you” and Jamie are being asked about joint plans, plans “you” and Jamie have together. In that case, “yours and Jamie’s plans” is an overcorrection; that version is only correct if he’s asking about your individual plans.
I didn’t know that for sure, myself — or I thought that the “yours and Jamie’s” version was always correct, but didn’t always use it because it sounds pretentious. You learn something new every day.
[3:40 PM: Not that this distinction isn’t useful, but I apparently misread the initial sentences. “Yours plans” doesn’t make sense; “yours” is what’s called an absolute possessive, and here’s Garner’s note on that:
“Occasionally, an absolute possessive occurs when it shouldn’t — usually in combination with ordinary possessives. E.g. ‘If a new relationship breaks up, your teen may feel very protective of you and feel stress about both yours [read your] and his or her vulnerability.'”
So: it’s wrong. Sorry for the confusion and thanks to the readers who caught it.]
Tags: grammar
