POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : It's a riddle : Re: It's a riddle Server Time
11 Oct 2024 03:15:56 EDT (-0400)
  Re: It's a riddle  
From: scott
Date: 7 Feb 2008 04:38:08
Message: <47aad180$1@news.povray.org>
>> Which is possession.  "The property of Tim" is grammatically equivalent
>> to "Tim's property".  "A day's work", as shorthand for "a day's worth of
>> work", that is to say, is equivalent to "the worth of a day of work";
>> the day possesses the *value* of the work done.
>
>  When I was in school they told us that in English "'s" should only be
> used with people, otherwise the "of" version should be used. For example,
> you shouldn't say "the house's window" but "the window of the house".

Yeh I was told that too, the reasoning being that only people could own 
things in the strictest sense of possession.  I try to use that most of the 
time but often it just sounds wrong.

What also confused me at an early age was why "its" didn't have an 
apostrophe, as in  "its lid is hot".  In my mind, it was indicating 
possession, like saying "the car's roof is red", why not "it's roof is red" 
(when you're using "it" instead of "the car")?

>  OTOH, there are situations where it's clearly misused. For example,
> I have seen "not as scary as you two's faces", which sounds really 
> awkward.
> I would say "not as scary as the faces of you two" would be much better.

"not as scary as your two faces" sounds better to me.  No idea if it's 
correct or not.


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