Thread: NEW FEATURE: Improved Quick Reply!

Originally Posted by Kagato

Oh BTW I have one for you grammar Nazis: how the hell do you stick an apostrophe on else to make it plural and possessive? I want to form a sentence such as "everybody elses'". Which means I want to form a sentence akin to "peoples' stuff".

Please note: peoples' = possessive and pluralized form of people

BTW, I misspelled possessive.

I wouldn't consider myself a nazi, but I'm almost certain that it's impossible to pluralize else. In the way you want to use it, else would be an adjective. I don't believe the form of an adjective will ever change based upon gender or amount. The proper wording is "everyone else's".

JejeMon talks......damn dont you even go to school....

Technically, I don't think else, or any other adjective outside of adjectives that are used to indicate ownership can be possessive, which is why it comes up as an error. For example his, her, my, its, your and our. There aren't very many, maybe one or two more which I can't seem to recall at the moment. However, over the years people must have gotten tired of saying "the possessions of everyone else" and started using "everyone else's possessions" so often that it's a commonly and understandably overlooked mistake.

edit:: another common mistake, one I often make myself is placing an apostrophe on the word its when I'm using it to describe ownership of a non-gendered noun. "Its" is possessive in itself, and the word it's with an apostrophe should only be used as the shortened form of "it is".

If you think about it, that must be correct, because the word itself means the noun being described is owned, so an apostrophe would be redundant.

edit:: I think in the end a super grammar nazi would call me out on "everyone else's" because it's not really correct but it's way easier than saying "the whatever of whomever" all the time. Not to mention, it's pretty much colloquially accepted in every English speaking nation.