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Preferred way to apostrophise in case of dual or multiple ownership by distinct entities

When forming the possessive of a compound noun, does one add "'s" to both or just one of the nouns?

For example,

Jim's and Huck's raft

or

Jim and Huck's raft

tchrist
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bcc32
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  • Some related questions: this one and this one – yoozer8 Mar 08 '12 at 03:54
  • @FumbleFingers You are correct. I was sure there was one around here somewhere, but I didn't notice it in the first few search results. – yoozer8 Mar 08 '12 at 04:00
  • @Jim: It took me a while! Next time it'll be easier even if we forget the best search terms, because if we don't find that original, we'll find this one - which will be closed with a link to the original! – FumbleFingers Mar 08 '12 at 04:04
  • @FumbleFingers Although I agree that this seems a duplicate, there is a deeper question that to my knowledge is unanswered. See my comment below. – tchrist Mar 08 '12 at 04:21
  • @tchrist: Both the answers to the original question address the issue of two different "possessions" as well as two different "owners". – FumbleFingers Mar 08 '12 at 13:39

1 Answers1

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The latter is correct:

Jim and Huck's raft.

yoozer8
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Jesse Good
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  • This is actually the same as how people say: “The person in the car’s phone rang”, in which you apply the ’s to the end of the NP. It’s really quite interesting IMHO. “Jim and Huck” is one NP, and the ’s gets applied to the end of the whole thing, just like with “person in the car”. See? – tchrist Mar 08 '12 at 04:19
  • @tchrist: Sorry, I didn't understand your explanation. The sentence "The person in the car's phone rang." is not English. – Jesse Good Mar 08 '12 at 04:31
  • Of course it’s English. You hear it all the time from native speakers. – tchrist Mar 08 '12 at 04:32
  • @tchrist: I'm a native English speaker and have never seen that usage (I also Googled it and didn't get any hits). However, English is a big language so I could be wrong! Also, native speakers make mistakes all the time when speaking, so that might be the case. – Jesse Good Mar 08 '12 at 04:35
  • Complex NPs like chairman pro tem, surgeon general, and mother-in-law all form a possessive by adding ’s on the last word, no matter that that word is not the head noun of the NP. They form plurals in a very different way. That type of ’s is more than merely somewhat odd. You also have an odd case with a double substantive in the NP when the second part is a pronoun: notice how the possessive of “It belongs to Bill and me, so it’s Bill’s and mine” not “so it’s Bill and mine”. There’s more afoot here than just putting ’s at the end. – tchrist Mar 08 '12 at 05:13
  • @tchrist: Yes, there are many odd things about possessives. Here is another one New York’s and Chicago’s transportation systems. <-- In this example having two `s is correct because "transportation systems" are two different entities. Unless you already have, buy a copy of "The Chicago Manual of Style" for more reference. – Jesse Good Mar 08 '12 at 05:38