Should there be an apostrophe in the following sentence. If so, where?
"Play is our brains favorite way of learning."
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2I would suggest that it is actually more colloquial to say play is the brain's favourite way of learning which, incidentally, avoids the problem which I think you are trying to highlight. – Nigel J Jun 15 '18 at 03:31
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1Similar: Members must use their own cards ,or, members must use their own card? – herisson Jun 15 '18 at 04:43
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@NigelJ You still need an apostrophe. What really are you implying? – Kris Jun 15 '18 at 05:45
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Voted for migration to [ell.se] – Kris Jun 15 '18 at 05:49
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The sentence will remain ambiguous and confusing without rephrasing of some kind. Either what @NigelJ suggested—which seems best to me, or something like Play is each of our brain's favourite way of learning. (That's less ambiguous, but also more awkward.) – Jason Bassford Jun 15 '18 at 06:12
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1Possible duplicate of Our bodies' or our body's – herisson Jun 15 '18 at 16:24
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Yes, and it depends:
*"Play is our brains favorite way of learning." -- ungrammatical; doesn't make sense.
"Play is our brain's favorite way of learning." -- the brain of each of us.
"Play is our brains' favorite way of learning." -- the brains of ours.
HTH.
Kris
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Maybe it's just me but two and three both seem wrong. I don't share a brain with anyone else, in two. Three, to me, doesn't need an apostrophe since it says 'our'. – Nigel J Jun 15 '18 at 08:39
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Yes, you need an apostrophe.
To me, “our brain’s” doesn't make any sense because I can only interpret “our brain” as meaning “the single brain belonging to us collectively”. So I would only use “our brains’ ”. But different English speakers apparently have different intuitions about the acceptability of expressions like these.
As I mentioned in the comments, a related question is Members must use their own cards ,or, members must use their own card? I didn't look through the linked questions earlier, but now I have, and I have found one that I think is a duplicate: Our bodies' or our body's.
herisson
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"Play is our brain's favorite way of learning."
In this sentence'Play' is a noun, 'is' is a verb and 'our brain's favorite way of learning' is a complement. Therefore there should not be an apostrophe.
