Understand the Possessive and When to Use It

Here’s a common writing mistake you need to be aware of. In this instance, the mistake was exemplified in an Apple News pre-Independence Day post that opened like this: 

This weekend’s celebrations will look very different from years past….

Can you spot the error? The writer is comparing “celebrations” to “years past.” As it so happens, these two items always look different because one of them is a group of celebrations and the other is a group of years! What the writer was trying to say was

         This weekend’s celebrations will look very different from celebrations of years past….  

But the writer didn’t say that. Sure, maybe we can figure out what the writer meant to say, but that doesn’t count, especially in a court of law when the dispute involves a contract or a report of some kind.

From an editorial perspective, the fix I’ve suggested works okay, but it could be said more succinctly by indicating a possessive through use of an apostrophe rather than “celebrations of years past,” to derive

         This weekend’s celebrations will look very different from years’ past….

Although that fix is okay, I prefer

         This weekend’s celebrations will look very different from past years’….

because it makes the apostrophe (and thus a possessive) more obvious.

 

Copyright © 2020 by John Philip Bachner. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of John Philip Bachner or his duly appointed deputy, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to John Philip Bachner via e-mail, text, or ground delivery. Do not cut, paste, and forward this post to others. That’s against the law.