Use of apostrophe

Forums: Grammar, Esl, English
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Is the following sentence grammatically correct?

Every user's email address can be found in the directory.

I would normally re-word a sentence like this to say "The email adressess for all users can be found in the directory" but this was written by somebody else and I would like to know whether it is silly to mention it.

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Type: Question • Score: 5 • Views: 361 • Replies: 3

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@hanstand,

The use of that apostrophe is fine.

Frankly, that writing is not awful or even ungrammatical. Personally, I'd write it as 'each', (not every), but that is a nit.

Secondly, you proposed a wordy sentence. I'd correct it this way.

Quote:

"The email for each user (or addressee) can be found in the directory."

or even more simply:

Quote:

"Each user's email address can be found in the directory."

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@hanstand,

Quote:

...whether it is silly to mention it

Not at all Han. Of course Rag as usu is 100 percent on the ball. However, "Every" instantly struck me as wrong, or at least awkward, something to do with "number" or "Tag"?

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=synonym+for+grammatical+%22number%22

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@Ragman,

Quote:

Personally, I'd write it as 'each', (not every), but that is a nit.

Me too, because each applies to two or more objects or people, whereas every applies to three or more, and if the the number is uncertain, you don't know that is not two. Also, we tend to use each if we are thinking about members of a group individually, and every if we are thinking of them in total, and it seems to me we are thinking about each user individually.

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Use of apostrophe

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