Someone else’s
June 4th, 2009 by dyske
Is “someone else’s” grammatically correct? Every time I type, the spell-checker reminds me that it’s wrong.
There are a lot of discussions online about “passers-by” vs. “passer-bys”. The general consensus, from what I saw, is that the former is more correct. If this is true, shouldn’t it be “someone’s else”?
I personally feel that “passer-bys” is more correct, especially when you remove the hyphen (“passerbys”). It’s more consistent with other words like “blastoffs” and “playoffs”.
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We (i.e. the creators of Pain in The English) developed a series of iPhone apps to teach preschool kids how to recognize letters and words. (My wife developed the characters and I did the coding.) Our own 4-year old daughter has been enjoying them. They are now available on Apple's App Store. You can search for "bitskis" on your iPhone, or visit the official website at bitskis.com.
If you have kids and own an iPhone, please check it out. It's $2.
“Someone else’s” is correct if you are referring to an item that belongs to someone else. E.g., “This is someone else’s blog entry.”
The correct plural for “passer-by” is “passers-by”. This is because the word “by” is being used as an adjective modifying the noun “passer”. The noun is the word that is being pluralized.
In most cases in English the adjective goes before the noun, but in compound nouns such as “passer-by”, “attorney general”, and “mother-in-law”, the adjective is used to modify the noun, so it is not pluralized. I’ve found it helps to mentally treat the adjective as a separate element from the noun, or place it in the usual position for an adjective, when trying to determine the plural. Thus we have:
One passer-by (one by-passer, one passer going by)
Two passers-by
One attorney general (one general attorney)
Two attorneys general
One mother-in-law (one person who is by law my mother)
Two mothers-in-law
Yes, “someone else’s” and “passers-by” is correct.
There’s nothing to add to yello.cape.cod’s explanation. ;)
Just one more thing:
Whose: mother-in-law’s
One small note: “passerby” and “passersby” do not have hyphens (according to Webster’s dictionary)
My first reaction was that I agreed with yello.cape.cod’s conclusion but not their argument. After all, “Someone else”, like “attorney general”, is a noun (well, pronoun, but close enough) plus a trailing adjective, so gee, why aren’t the two constructions the same?
Oh. Right: “Someone else’s” is a possessive. “Attorneys general” is a plural. Never mind.
the costruction
“…yello.cape.cod’s conclusion but not their argument”
is confusing.
does THEIR mean the person named (if so use singular her or his) or does it mean the group of other posters?
Contrary to common belief, the words “they” and “their” have been used as indeterminate singular pronouns for centuries in English. If you believe in prescriptivism in language then the use of “they” as a singular pronoun is perfectly correct.
However, in the above sentence “her” would have been appropriate. :)