There are three ways of showing possession in English:
- The apostrophe
- used with people, e.g. customers' rights (NB the customer's rights refers to one customer; the customers' rights refers to more than one.)
- Proper names:
John's and Paul's books
John and Paul's book
James's book
Socrates' book - used with time and distance :
a day's pay
today's paper
in two weeks' time - Plural nouns:
The students' uniforms
The children's toys
- Using 'of'
- usually used with objects, e.g. the price of petrol
- used to talk about position, e.g. the back of the room
- Using a noun and an adjective
- a table leg
- a night flight
- shirt buttons
- the car door (the car's door)
The double genitive
- He is a friend of my mother's
- He is a friend of ours
- John is a work colleague of mine
- I'm going to Mary's