Possesive form of indefinite pronoun "one".

The possessive pronoun “one’s” requires an apostrophe before the S, unlike “its,” “hers,” and other personal pronouns. Examples: “pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps,” “a jury of one’s peers,” “minding one’s own business.”

A simple test: try inserting “anyone’s” in place of “one’s.” If it works grammatically, you need the apostrophe in “one’s” too. When “one’s” is a contraction of “one is” it also requires an apostrophe: “no one’s listening,” “this one’s for you.”

The only times “ones” has no apostrophe are when it is being used to mean “examples” or “people” as in “ripe ones” or “loved ones,” or in the informal arithmetical expression “the ones column.”

apparently thats another UK thingy, like " I got Orientated" instead of "I got oriented" I posted the form without an apostraphe into a search on a journalism site and it came back with "accepted use in US and Canadia"

TYN's explanation coincides with what i was taught, both as a child and while at university. I also consider it plausible and sensible.

Well, that's interesting, because the guidance about "one" and the apostrophe which I posted came from a page hosted by Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska. As for "orientated" I hate it and I am a British English user! According to corpus studies, in American usage, oriented is about 60 times more common than orientated. However, in British usage, orientated is only about 5 times more common than oriented. A lot of sources say that it (orientated) should be avoided in formal writing. So orientate still a long way from being "standard", but it's over 10 times more "acceptable" to Brits than Americans.

I always hear it in these "outdoor" survivalist shows with people like "Ber Gryllis" and Jeremy Clarkson. (I just assumed that Clarkson did it for laughs).

Brits usually laugh at malaprops and localisms. Merkins just take notes and use it as fodder against the speaker. In the last few days the US news has been eviscerating poor Gov Perry when he spoke of a "stopped clock being right once a day"
I made the comment that, rememebring that Perry was a mil pilot, he was used to mil clocks (24 hour face). A comment then stated that most Merkins are too dumb to recognize the difference in clock works so the joke was on the Governor(implying he was an elitist). And the comment wasnt by HAwkeye.


Wayne State eh? well, Nebraska has never shown us that it was even born in the US. We suspect that Nebraska was really born in Kenya.

In regard to this: "One's ready to confess?", I take that as a contraction of "One is", with ready being an adjective. If it were possessive, it would say something about one's readiness to confess, readiness being a noun.

Clocks are different these days from ye olde days when proverbs were invented. Lots of people get the time from phones or computers. I can imagine a faulty digital clock stuck at 23:15 (or 11:15 PM); I had a computer that sometimes locked up and the clock at the bottom right would not advance from where it was when the freeze happened. If you had chosen either 24-hour format or 12 hour format with AM or PM then it would be right once a day. If you chose 12 hour format with no AM or PM suffix, then, like a clock with hands, it would be right twice a day. Anyhow, that stopped clock saying sucks to me because if a stopped clock is "right" once or twice a day it is only by coincidence, and you would only know it was right if you had an accurate running clock to compare it with.

I have met plenty of Brits who can't mentally translate a 24 hour time to 12 hour format in their heads if it is after noon.

It might possibly give rise that idea, but it would be malformed and bad English, since 'ready' in that sentence is an adjective, and not a noun.

A perfect exposition on the principles of apostrophication.
A subject of profound importance.

Kinda like preventative as a pretentious preventive.
Aaarrghh!

That's "give rise to that idea".


I don't know where else Brits (or anybody else) would mentally translate something, if not in their heads.

heh heh

I had an econ geology teacher years ago who always thought he was Twain. We used to call his malaphrases after his name (Since he is dead, I dont wanna dishonor his name cause his family still writes me e-mails)

He would say stuff like

"In our minds mentally speaking"

"In Nicaragua wed see thousand acre maize fields full of corn

"I love warm water lobster but in Cuba theyd really charge a lot for a piece of tail"

That was 35 years ago and I still can recite

Isn't that what I said? The poster was asking if that was correct re possession, and no, it wasn't in the poster's sentence.