Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
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Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

possession with an entity which uses parenthesis

I would like to know if you could tell me where the apostrophe “s” would go in the following statement. Assuming that the primary name is the name of the facility and the information contained within the parenthesis is the corporation in which the entity falls under.

Bobby Thompson (Rutter)’s officials have agreed to waive a formal exit conference.

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Comments

Ugh.

It's a tricky one, but I can certainly rule out the way you have phrased it there.

I would plump for: "Bobby Thompson's (Rutter's) officials have agreed to ..."

Dave3 Apr-04-2005

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In Dave's example it is not clear if (Rutter's) refers to possession of Bobby, or possession of the officials. Unless you must have the apostrophe, why not do it like this:
"Officials of Bobby Thompson (Rutter) have agreed to ..."

slemmet1 Apr-04-2005

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Slemmet's solution is the proper and elegant one. It's not clear to me whether you should use "Officials of..." or "The officials of...," but that's a quibble you can quickly resolve.

speedwell2 Apr-05-2005

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Yeah, you're spot on about the ambiguity of my rendering. "Officials of Bobby Thompson (Rutter)" it is.

dave Apr-05-2005

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There's no agreed solution for possessives of this type, unfortunately.

They occur quite often when describing an actor's role in a film.
Three possibilities:
A. Don Vito Corleone's [Marlon Brando] offer.
B. Don Vito Corleone [Brando]'s offer.
C. Don Vito Corleone's [Brando's] offer.

Fowler's suggests 'B', deems 'A' legitimate and discourages 'C' as being 'over fussy'

Option B reads better, but it seems rather unusual to have apostrophe-s attached to the closing brace.

Fowlerfan Oct-27-2005

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