WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Grammar Minute: Grammar Hall of Shame
Episode Date: May 1, 2025New to the Grammar Hall of Shame: "You can respond to other's events." Learn why this is wrong on today's episode of Grammar Minute! ...
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Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we're saving the English language 60 seconds at a time.
I'm Lauren Smith, and I spotted a major grammar error in a well-known piece of software.
The sentence is, respond to others' events.
And the grammar error was that the apostrophe in others came before the S.
This is wrong because others is plural.
You're not responding to the event of one other.
You're responding to the event of any number of hypothetical others.
As with World Pilots Day, which we discussed in the last episode,
a plural noun that ends in S has the apostrophe added after the S to make it possessive.
Do not get confused here.
As a small reminder, apostrophes never make words plural.
That's probably what the writer of this ungrammatical sentence was thinking,
putting the apostrophe in the wrong place.
But how that sentence made it into the final product, I have no idea.
That's your Grammar Minute.
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