Possessive: ones or one's?

[mplsray]

For what it is worth, Kenneth G. Wilson identifies his work The Columbia Guide to Standard American English as both prescriptive and descriptive, accepting that there are, indeed, prescriptive rules, but that they do not cover all usage questions. Perhaps he includes genitive its under the prescriptive rules when he says:

its, it's
The genitive of the pronoun it is its, without an apostrophe; the contraction of it is is spelled it's, with an apostrophe. Most errors involve using the contraction when the genitive is intended; these are usually the errors of inattention or carelessness, but they're often judged as though ignorance caused them, so inspect carefully what you write.

I actually consider Wilson to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, in the fashion of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. When it comes down to it, every dialect has rules that must be obeyed in order for the speaker or writer not be thought of as odd. Even when English spelling had no standard rules, as we think of as standard today, someone who wrote toag for the word goat would have been seen as being in error. It just so happens that genitive its as the acceptable spelling is a rule agreed upon by both sides of the usage debate.

 

[JulianStuart]

Thanks Ray
It's good to know the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive is not always black and white! The toag vs goat is a clear example of something I would have no trouble supporting as prescriptive - I cannot imagine any serious dispute, given the sound values for the two consonants. The presence or absence of an apostrophe as "acceptable" has moved from dsiputed/variable in the 18 th century and has settled down since then to a clear description of current usage. One's has, however, remained steadfastly resistant to deapostrophication, attested by usage, despite proponents of its removal. A straddling version is the two well-populated camps of adding " 's " vs. simply " ' " to form the possessive of a name which is singular but ends in s. We can describe the two camps, but the choice is left to style guides rather than "authorities" who prescribe. Newspapers will say "You will follow our style guide" but that is in the interests of consistency, rather than trying to assert that other style guides are "incorrect"

 

[Gregorius24]

In regard to the possessive adjective "its," I don't have an issue understanding the difference between "its" and "it's" ("it + is"). I do, however, sometimes tell students to think of "itself," which never uses an apostrophe, whenever they have difficulty remembering the usage of "its."

 

[Mog86]

One'd like to think one's one's own law on this one. Maybe this one's one of those ones where noone's won? One'dn't've thought one couldn't've figured out this one by one'sself... oh wait, that one's 'oneself'! I've not won now I've gotten 'one's' wrong once meself too!!1

 

[Notafrog]

'His', 'hers' and 'its' are the possessive forms of the third-person personal pronoun.

OK then, consider this:
1) His book, her book, its book.
2) The book is hers, The book is his, The book is its.

Do any of those look wrong?

 

[Mog86]

1) 'his' / 'her' / 'its' [book] = possessive adjective/determiner
2) [The book is] 'his' / 'hers' = possessive pronoun; [The book is] 'its' = error. (I don't think 'its' is ever a possessive pronoun?)

 

[JamesM]

There are times when it is used in the possessive, but "The book is its" sounds very odd. Are we talking about a space alien's book? A dog's book? A computer's book? There aren't many creatures who can own a book and be referred to as "it".

Here's an example of "its" as a possessive pronoun (at least, I think it's an example):

Through no fault of its own, Texas has now lost 2.3 million acres of land to a freak weather combination that has ignited 9,000 wildfires across the state well ahead of summer.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/050411-571150-texas-twisted.htm#ixzz2e971InNM

Without the "own", however, it would sound odd to me, even as "Even though it's not its fault, ..."

 

[Mog86]

This example, 'Through no fault of its own', uses the possessive determiner 'its', not a possessive pronoun.
If you were to change this 'its' to its feminine variant, it would be the possessive determiner 'her', not the possessive pronoun 'hers'.

The 'its' here is simply determining who or what the 'own' belongs to. You can say: his own, her own, its own, their own, ... However, saying 'hers own' or 'theirs own' would be using possessive pronouns wrongly, where possessive determiners are needed instead.

 

[ElectricRay]

One's is a possessive adjective, not a pronoun.

How do you figure that, exactly? If it is an adjective, what is it describing? One is an indefinite pronoun.

 

[mplsray]

How do you figure that, exactly? If it is an adjective, what is it describing? One is an indefinite pronoun.

From the Wikipedia article "Possessive determiner":

Possessive determiners constitute a sub-class of determiners which modify a noun by attributing possession (or other sense of belonging) to someone or something. They are also known as possessive adjectives.

Examples in English include possessive forms of the personal pronouns, namely my, your, his, her, its, our and their, but excluding the forms such as mine and ours that are used as possessive pronouns and not as determiners. Possessive determiners may also be taken to include possessive forms made from nouns, from other pronouns and from noun phrases, such as John's, the girl's, somebody's, the king of Spain's, when used to modify a following noun.

One's and somebody's are examples of possessive determiners made from a pronoun.

 

[JamesM]

Also known as possessive adjectives, according to that article, so it may just be a matter of different terms for the same thing.

 

[Binzi]

Could I say?:
One eats their dinner?

I think it's a uniquely American thing, but 'their' is an accepted generic 3rd person singular term replacing 'he, she, or it' when the gender is either unknown, unspecified, or changeable.

"The head chef features their special each thursday."

'One eats their dinner' would seem to be fine, although it would be mixing styles of The Queen's English and the Yank English with which I grew up. (!)

 

[Dale Texas]

On the way-above questions of whether or not certain contractions should take place or not to avoid confusion, there's the well-known problem of "it's" never being placed at the end of a sentence when it's used as emphatic denial alone:

"Your name is not Harry!"

Answer of refutal: "Yes, it is!" NOT, "Yes, it's!
This is sound pattern usage sounding wrong because it sounds wrong because it just sounds wrong because we just don't say it that way. I'm unaware of any grammatical rule which would forbid this.
Yet...
"In English you have one dictionary which settles all questions of word usuage and punctution!"

Answer of refutal: "No we don't!" OR "No we do not!" both sound patterns perfectly acceptable.

I belive in "correctness" and going to sources for guidance, but sometimes English is just plain quirky this way.

 

[lovekat]

There are two different ways to use the apostrophe in English. One is to show a possesive and the other is to make a contraction.

"One eats one's dinner" is correct. This is the possesive apostrophe.
The dinner belongs to Mary. The dinner is Mary's.

Personal pronouns never take an apostrophe. "One eats ones dinner" is correct - "one's" is always a contraction of "one is"

"One eats one's dinner" translates to "One eats one is dinner".

In short, "ones dinner" is correct.

 

[JulianStuart]

Welcome back, Lovekat!
Your second post in the forum is remarkably like your first (#13 in this very thread almost 5 years ago).
Could you possibly supply some support for your assertion - a link to a dictionary, style guide, that sort of thing?

Edited to add
For example:
CollinsDictionary.com has

one's (wʌnz)
adjective (formal) a third-person singular possessive corresponding to one
One has cut one's finger. One must wash one's hair.

Random House also cites one's (Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2014.)

a person of the speaker's kind; such as the speaker himself or herself: to press one's own claims.

My hard copy 2Vol Compact OED has this entry under one

One : indefinite pronoun (with genitive one's)

 

[Lord Wallace]

Many apologies for jumping into this ancient thread (and it's my very first post here - I found this fabulous website as a result of a grammatical enquiry, thanks to Google), but:

Could I say?:
One eats their dinner?

For me, it has to be "one eats one's dinner".

Post 5 above suggests that "one eats his dinner" is possible in AmE.

I don't think any variety of English says "one eats their dinner", but someone may well come along and prove me wrong...

Surely this could be construed as speaking in the third person?
Fair enough, perhaps not 'eats', but 'eating'.
Ergo, I could say 'Bah! That damned telephone. Always rings whilst one eats/is eating their dinner'.

Additionally, it could also be descriptive of one eating someone else's dinner, I would have thought?

 

[wandle]

In short, "ones dinner" is correct.

May I respond to this by referring to an earlier post?

 

[Pedro y La Torre]

'His', 'hers' and 'its' are the possessive forms of the third-person personal pronoun. (Its nominative forms are 'he', 'she' and 'it'.) The possessive in this case is one of the rare examples of a declined form in English.

'One' does not belong to the above set and therefore does not have its own declined form.
Therefore it becomes possessive in the same way as most other words: with the apostrophe and 's'.

That, as they say, answers that.

 

[HazyCar]

Would it be correct to not use an apostrophe for contracting one has?

 

[Loob]

Would it be correct to not use an apostrophe for contracting one has?

No.

Welcome to the forums, HazyCar!

 

[HazyCar]

No.

How would you correctly write "No one(')s ever done this before"?

 

[Loob]

I would write "No-one's ever done this before."

 

[HazyCar]

According to the oxford dictionary one's is used to show possession and is an exception to the general rule. However, on here there are conflicting answers. So which one is correct?

 

[JulianStuart]

According to the oxford dictionary one's is used to show possession and is an exception to the general rule. However, on here there are conflicting answers. So which one is correct?

There seems to be only one ( ) who asserts that "ones" is a correct possessive from and never returned to explain the assertion. No-one else agreed with lovekat. One's is both the possessive form and the contraction of "one has" (or, in your case "No-one has...") or "one is ...".

 

[PennyG]

Which of the following is correctly punctuated:

(1) "One eats ones dinner."
(2) "One eats one's dinner." ?

I've always assumed that (2) is correct, but then I remembered that we wouldn't put an apostrophe in "It eats its dinner", because "it's" is only used as an abbreviation for "it is" or "it has". So should there be an apostrophe in "one's", which plays the same grammatical role as "its"?

I'm joining in not to answer the question because that has been answered but to refute the statement made in several of the answers that "its" is an exception, or that "its" somehow loses its apostrophe in order to distinguish it from it's.

Its is a pronoun. It has no apostrophe to lose. It is not an exception.

An apostrophe is almost always used to denote something missing - a missing word, a missing letter - and this is the same for the possessive which comes from the old English forms where you would not say The man's coat, but would say The man his coat or The dog its tail or The woman her shoes.
The so-called possessive is a contraction denoting the missing word. The man's coat, the dog's tail, the woman's shoes.
You could also say His coat, its tail, her shoes. If you follow the spurious 'exception' statement, you would expect to write Hi's coat and He'r shoes, which is clearly absurd. Equally absurd is It's tail, but because we have a widely used word "it's" it doesn't look so obviously wrong as hi's or he'r.

A good rule of thumb when deciding whether and where to use an apostrophe is to imagine the sentence in the old English style. The dog his coat => The dog's coat. The dogs their coats => The dogs' coats.

 

[Loob]

Hello Penny - welcome to the forms!

Actually, it's not true that

the possessive [...] comes from the old English forms where you would not say The man's coat, but would say The man his coat or The dog its tail or The woman her shoes.

The possessive 's derives from the Old English -es ending of the genitive singular of (1) most strong declension nouns and (2) masculine and neuter strong adjectives. This ending was subsequently generalised, first to all strong declension nouns, and later to all nouns.

To quote from the Wiki article English possessive (my highlighting):

The spelling -es remained, but in many words the letter -e- no longer represented a sound. In those words, printers often copied the French practice of substituting an apostrophe for the letter e. In later use, -'s was used for all nouns where the /s/ sound was used for the possessive form, and when adding -'s to a word like love the e was no longer omitted. [...]
In the Early Modern English of 1580 to 1620 it was sometimes spelled as "his" as a folk etymology​

That said, if rules of thumb help, then they're helpful!

 

[entangledbank]

Except that the genitive endings don't actually come from that. The strong masculine and neuter nouns of Old English had the ending -s or -es and this spread to all words in the Middle English period. Around that later time the of unstressed 'his' was lost, and so while the vowel of -es was still pronounced as a separate syllable, 'the man's coat' and 'the man his coat' happened to be pronounced the same way, which gave rise to the myth that the genitive was a contraction of the pronoun, and might actually have been the reason the apostrophe was adopted.

cross-posted . . . like Loob says too.

 

[PennyG]

Thank you, Loob & entangledbank for the welcome and the response. I'm not convinced that we're not all right to some degree. But what I am convinced of is that the pronoun "its" does not "lose" its apostrophe in order to distinguish it from the contraction "it's" which is an explanation that I keep seeing and cringing at, and what prompted me to join in with my explanation. Perhaps I should say with m'y explanation

 

[Loob]

It's only in historical terms that posters in this thread have suggested that possessive its has lost an apostrophe - and in historical terms, it's true....

(Personally, I'm convinced that apostrophes in general are on their way out. The sooner they disappear, the better, say I!)

 

[Andygc]

(Personally, I'm convinced that apostrophes in general are on their way out. The sooner they disappear, the better, say I!)

That might adversely affect one's enjoyment of forums such as this. There'd be nowhere for one to observe one's digital friends debating one's observations on one's views of English grammar and punctuation. Where would one find discussions of Jesus' versus Jesus's and St James' Park versus St James's Park? What a sad world you wish for, Mrs L!

 

[JulianStuart]

(Youd be happy with St Jamess Park?)

 

[Notafrog]

Just to pour a bit of oil on the fire, the word "ones" is a perfectly valid word in English.
...
...
...
...
...

It doesn't mean "belonging to one", though.

 

[deprogramming services]

It is correct that one is a pronoun and therefore is not technically supposed to qualify for an apostrophe', but given the problems in clarity and ambiguity mentioned above I would say the best rule would be to not use it. I'm ok with using it too though. But the rule should be clear. Lacking a standard and commonly followed rule of usage creates ambiguity, or at least the risk of it. With or without the apostrophe' it will look like the same word being used in a different sense. But it's no big deal, since ambiguity is already common in words; it's like a few grains of sand thrown into a bucket of sand. So it doesn't matter. There just needs to be a standard rule of usage.

One has to be able to distinguish between ones plural, as in more than one one, and ones ones, as in the number of ones one possesses. Example: The number of ones in ones possession goes up when one's spending bigger bills. Here's the same sentence in classical usage: The number of ones in a man's possession goes up when he's spending bigger bills, (or ...ones in his possession... when he's...). Or colloquial: the number of ones in your possession go up when you're spending bigger bills.

The use of the word ones where his used to be commonly used is a bastardization of language done for the purpose of cultural and societal engineering. It's one of many examples.

 

[JamesM]

The use of the word ones where his used to be commonly used is a bastardization of language done for the purpose of cultural and societal engineering. It's one of many examples.

The use of "one" to mean "an unspecified person" is not about societal engineering. It has been around for hundreds of years and certainly wasn't introduced recently, no matter what nefarious purpose one might imagine is behind it.

The recommendation to use "one" appears in an 1892 book entitled "Every-day English", published in Boston, and discusses its origins going back to at least the Elizabethan period. It may have become more formal in American English over the years but it is an old standby in the language.

 

[JulianStuart]

It is correct that one is a pronoun and therefore is not technically supposed to qualify for an apostrophe',
.

Welcome!

Is there some technical rule for correctness you are citing? Only one other poster in the thread feels that the possessive of one is or should be ones.

The evidence from the printed word is against this. The printed book database (millions of books scanned by Google) allows one to display the frequency of words over time (in graph form) and to find examples of individual uses (by clicking links below the graph). This shows the plots for ones and one's. Clicking the links for "ones" finds only plurals (of the word one) while "one's" finds both possessive and contractions of "one is". (Disclaimer:I've not looked at all the citations of "ones" )

 

[Andygc]

The use of "one" to mean "an unspecified person" is not about societal engineering. It has been around for hundreds of years and certainly wasn't introduced recently

Just for the record: the OED has it first appearing in that sense in approximately 1400. The possessive "one's" earliest citation is dated 1655. The OED also states quite clearly that the genitive form for this meaning is "one's", and I think I can assume that the editorial staff put some effort into ensuring that this is an accurate record of normal English usage.

 

[deprogramming services]

As I said, I'm ok with either ones or one's used for the possessive of one; I just want there to be one common rule on the matter. It's my understanding though that there is a rule that pronouns do not qualify for an apostrophe when used in a possessive case. Its instead of it's is the example that's most commonly given. This is the rule I was taught when I was in school. If there is not such a grammatical rule, let me know, and let me know why its is used for the possessive case instead of it's. Or if One is not a pronoun let me know that.

 

[Loob]

To quote from a previous post:

... I understand now that you're looking for a generally-stated 'rule'. Wandle's formulation in post 47 seems very helpful to me; but if you need a published source, perhaps the quotation from Elements of Style in post 30 would fit the bill?

 

[Andygc]

Use of it in modern language where the masculine pronoun used to be commonly used is social engineering.

Could you provide an example of the use of "one's" instead of "his" in modern English? I rarely see "one's" used in modern BE, and when it is used it is never as a substitute for "his".

 

[Dale Texas]

Im gainst some peoples desire for the total limination o postrophes and believe itd be a sad day for printers, writers trying to indicate dialectal pronunciations, and readers if thatd ever come to pass. Oned think itd be good for lazy typists fingers, though.

 

[velisarius]

I think this must have been said somewhere already in this very long thread, but in my experience "one" is used when we want to avoid the use of over-familiar/informal "you". It isn't used to camouflage a male gender pronoun.

You shouldn't eat peas with your knife.
One doesn't eat peas with one's knife.

A person dining out should never eat his or her peas with his or her knife - this is awkward
People who dine out should never eat peas with their knives - using the plural is an easy workaround. If that is also
"societal engineering", so be it.

 

[deprogramming services]

I think this must have been said somewhere already in this very long thread, but in my experience "one" is used when we want to avoid the use of over-familiar/informal "you". It isn't used to camouflage a male gender pronoun.

You shouldn't eat peas with your knife.
One doesn't eat peas with one's knife.

A person dining out should never eat his or her peas with his or her knife - this is awkward
People who dine out should never eat peas with their knives - using the plural is an easy workaround. If that is also
"societal engineering", so be it.

I agree with this. But the word one is used for that purpose sometimes. I would add that except in formal writing I prefer the use of the indefinite you to one. One is grammatically correct but you is correct by virtue of common usage, in informal writing, and one in such writing reeks of hyper-correctness.

 

[JulianStuart]

I agree with this. But the word one is used for that purpose sometimes. I would add that except in formal writing I prefer the use of the indefinite you to one. One is grammatically correct but you is correct by virtue of common usage, in informal writing, and one in such writing reeks of hyper-correctness.

I wonder if you are aware of the big difference in usage between AE and BE of one as an impersonal pronoun. In BE it used to be more common to use one as a replacement for you with the intent of being less direct (see velisarius's example) when insinuating that the listener should or should not engage in the activity. It clearly has nothing to do with gender - you is already neutral, so no conspiracy need be invoked here, because "one" was never a replacement for he or she. (Over-use of one, for example many times in one sentence, marked the speaker as aloof - "One should never get one's knickers in a twist when one is arguing with one's adversaries"). The AE usage of one differs from BE in that AE will usually only use it once, as a substitute for "someone", and is then faced later in the sentence with the his/her dilemma you seem to be mainly concerned with.

BE: One shouldn't eat one's peas with one's knife. (A less direct reprimand than using you - no gender avoidance or brainwashing involved here, it truly is an impersonal pronoun all the time.)

AE: One shouldn't eat his/her/their peas with his/her/their knife. (Treating the word one as meaning "(some)one" - distinctly different from the BE usage). If an AE speaker were to use "one's" I suspect you would think they were avoiding the gender dilemma and that this is what you seem to be railing against, right? But "one's" is rarely used by AE speakers in that situation.

As noted above, the issue of which word to use when the gender of the person is unknown is not new and they/their has been used in such a situation for centuries, despite complaints from those who were taught that they/their can only refer to multiple people. In contrast, the use of "one" as a "politically correct" substitute for he/she seems pretty rare, so raising the issue in a thread discussing whether one deserves an apostrophe or not, is a red herring

Back to the topic

I am intrigued that a teacher actively taught you this "rule" on pronouns and apostrophes. Did they/he/she extend it to "anyone", "someone", "everyone" and "no-one" and told you those did not deserve apostrophes either? They are all listed as pronouns, too. The vast majority of members in the thread and the evidence from printed books show that the "rule" only exists in the minds of extremely few people. Here's a plot of "anyones" and "anyone's" showing the latter to be about 500 times more common (many of the anyones are plurals anyway!). So what do you call a situation where everyone is in on the conspiracy except a handful of people? I think we'd say that handful of people were the conspirators

 

[deprogramming services]

I wonder if you are aware of the big difference in usage between AE and BE of one as an impersonal pronoun. In BE it used to be more common to use one as a replacement for you with the intent of being less direct (see velisarius's example) when insinuating that the listener should or should not engage in the activity. It clearly has nothing to do with gender - you is already neutral, so no conspiracy need be invoked here, because "one" was never a replacement for he or she. (Over-use of one, for example many times in one sentence, marked the speaker as aloof - "One should never get one's knickers in a twist when one is arguing with one's adversaries"). The AE usage of one differs from BE in that AE will usually only use it once, as a substitute for "someone", and is then faced later in the sentence with the his/her dilemma you seem to be mainly concerned with.

BE: One shouldn't eat one's peas with one's knife. (A less direct reprimand than using you - no gender avoidance or brainwashing involved here, it truly is an impersonal pronoun all the time.)

AE: One shouldn't eat his/her/their peas with his/her/their knife. (Treating the word one as meaning "(some)one" - distinctly different from the BE usage). If an AE speaker were to use "one's" I suspect you would think they were avoiding the gender dilemma and that this is what you seem to be railing against, right? But "one's" is rarely used by AE speakers in that situation.

As noted above, the issue of which word to use when the gender of the person is unknown is not new and they/their has been used in such a situation for centuries, despite complaints from those who were taught that they/their can only refer to multiple people. In contrast, the use of "one" as a "politically correct" substitute for he/she seems pretty rare, so raising the issue in a thread discussing whether one deserves an apostrophe or not, is a red herring

Back to the topic

I am intrigued that a teacher actively taught you this "rule" on pronouns and apostrophes. Did they/he/she extend it to "anyone", "someone", "everyone" and "no-one" and told you those did not deserve apostrophes either? They are all listed as pronouns, too. The vast majority of members in the thread and the evidence from printed books show that the "rule" only exists in the minds of extremely few people. Here's a plot of "anyones" and "anyone's" showing the latter to be about 500 times more common (many of the anyones are plurals anyway!). So what do you call a situation where everyone is in on the conspiracy except a handful of people? I think we'd say that handful of people were the conspirators

I actually came to this site because I wanted to know what the rule on use of an apostrophe with the word one is. I thought I made that clear. I'm fine with either way, and was not arguing for one over the other. I was just bringing up what I had been taught. I do remember being taught in English class that pronouns do not get apostrophes. That was a long time ago. But if that rule does not include all pronouns I'm glad to have it clarified now.

As far as my mentioning the PC usage of the pronoun one, I just thought it was an interesting thing to mention. I wasn't bringing it up to confuse the issue, which is what a red herring is. The word one can either have or not have an apostrophe and still be or not be PC, and I wasn't trying to argue one side or the other of the apostrophe argument anyway. I agree the point was not relevant to the thread; I just don't think it confused the issue being discussed here.

But thank you for the information on what I came here to find out. It was very nice of you to take the time to give me that. It looks like this is a good place to find answers to questions on grammar.

 

[PaulQ]

The addition of the apostrophe of the genitive 's' is not possible with personal possessive pronouns, which is probably what the OP's teacher meant when they said

there is a rule that pronouns do not qualify for an apostrophe when used in a possessive case. Its instead of it's is the example that's most commonly given. This is the rule I was taught when I was in school.

"The car is mine/yours/his/ours, etc." (and adjectivally "It is my/your/his/our, etc., car.")

One takes the genitive 's' as it is not a true personal possessive pronoun but it is a pronomial as it has a referent.

 

[JamesM]

An easy way to remember (for me, at least) is that "someone" performs the same role, and people don't seem to have trouble with adding the genitive "s" to someone. Another way is to adopt the old (American?) expression "a body" or the more standard "a person" to test the genitive:

"Someone should never get someone's knickers in a twist when someone is arguing with someone's adversaries."
"A body/person should never get a body's/person's knickers in a twist when a body/person is arguing with a body's/person's adversaries."

 

[Notafrog]

I do remember being taught in English class that pronouns do not get apostrophes.

Which is true. They get to be an entirely different word. His, not he's or him's. Our, not we's or us's. Your, not you's. Sometimes that entirely different word looks a lot like it might have done with an apostrophe (its) or might not be a different word at all (her).
Maybe nobody thought "one" was important enough to have its own separate word. Maybe it's because its actually a whole family of pronouns along with someone, anyone, everyone, no one — which unlike I, you, he, she, or it, do not point to anybody or anything directly identifiable.

Sigh. That's the mysteries of English for you; but then what else would we talk about?