tourists's

say what?

one tourist
two tourists

plural possessive: All of the tourists' luggage was lost.

Thanks all.

Do you think it's acceptable to change your example sentence to:

All of the tourists's luggage was lost.

We most certainly DO NOT add an apostrophe to denote plurality!

Unless we are semi-illiterate.

Tourist's denotes the possessive, as in "this towel is the tourist's" or ellipsis, as in "the tourist's bloody bloody well gone and done it again!" That is short for "the tourist has bloody well gone and done it again"

The random insertion of bewildered and despairing apostrophes into places where no apostrophe ought to be is a caus'e of utter de'spair and horror to those of us' who know where the poor little thing's bloody well belong.

Speak not of what you know not.

Yeat's inbloodydeed!

The random insertion of bewildered apostrophes

There is no condition, except parody, (or, possibly vernacular, in the case of a certain sad denizen of Tolkien's best known universe, and I don't think they HAD touristses in that world) under which it is acceptable to write tourists's

If you wish to denote the possessive for multiple tourists, one writes tourists'.

I have lived too long.

You need some humor in your life. The humors's job is to maintain equinimity of physiological functions.

Oh! The abuse of apostrophes. If only they could talk.

They shouted, at least in the street market in London that my mother bought her fruit and vegetables:

"Apple's fourpence a pound!" "Come and get your lovely carrot's!" etc

Actually, tourists' is not more "correct" than tourists's. It's just a case of long established convention to drop the additional "s."

Oh, sorry... after typing the post I was focusing on whether I'd made any mistakes in spelling etc. and I didn't remember to change PLURAL to POSSESSIVE...

Thanks all.

But if tourists's is OK, though rare, will native speakers pronounce it

/ˈtʊərɪstses/

Native speakers will pronounce both spellings as if they were written "tourists." There is no native speaker whom i have ever encounter who attempts to add an "s" sound to words such as that.

We're talking more about typographical/style matters here, rather than "grammar".

You're talking bollocks. He asked if it were acceptable. Either form is acceptable. I didn't mention grammar at all.

Oh dear!

When I was at school, we were taught this:

Singular possession is denoted by an apostrophe followed by an 's'.

The boy's coat
The cat's whiskers

If the noun ends in an 's' or an 's' sound, an apostrophe and 's' is not required, but is preferred:

The boss' hat or the boss's hat
Mr. Jones' golf clubs or Mr. Jones's golf clubs
Texas' weather or Texas's weather
Ms. Strauss' daughter or Ms. Strauss's daughter

To show plural possession, make the noun plural first. Then immediately use the apostrophe.

Examples:
two boys' hats two women's hats
two actresses' hats
two children's hats
the Changs' house
the Joneses' golf clubs
the Strauses' daughter
the Sanchezes' artwork
the Hastingses' appointment
the Leeses' books

Thus "two tourists's suitcases" would contravene this "rule". It certainly looks ugly, and I am pretty sure no native speaker would write it.

I think you have to define what you mean by 'acceptable', Set. It's not standard, though I must admit that it is much more common than I had thought.



This is also not standard. Using the subjunctive form as you have done here [and often do] is a hypercorrection, "A construction or pronunciation produced by mistaken analogy with standard usage out of a desire to be correct," [AHD].

In English, the subjunctive form is used to express irrealis or great doubt. Yours, "He asked if it were acceptable", does not express either of those. It is an 'if' that is equal to a 'whether'.

He asked whether it was acceptable.

I think that you've got a burr at six o'clock on yer wabbit tail, Wabbit.



How come you were silent when JoefromChicago and EvafromOklahoma advanced the spurious notion that an apostrophe 's' can only mean 'is' not 'has'?

Thanks all!

Do native speakers use the possessive like this?:

-Even a Chinese's dignity shall never be destroyed.
-Chinese's dignity shall never be destroyed.