Sunday, May 4, 2014

punctuation - What's the the proper usage of apostrophes for possession when two might be used? See example

I've looked other places online to try and find the answer to this question and was unable to confirm if I should use an apostrophe for both words or not. It seems awkward to do so but grammar rules appear to tell me otherwise. The situation I'm thinking of is one like this: "Mary's sister's lasagna" or "Joe's dog's bone." From the rules I've read I'm pretty sure that both words would need an apostrophe because they are both possessive, and each in their own right possessing individual things: it's Mary's sister, and the sister's lasagna. If it were Mary and her sister's lasagna, the apostrophe could go after 'sister' because they both are sharing possession of the same thing.

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