Saturday, August 3, 2019

possessives - When do we use "of" rather than " 's" to show possession?




It is a very simple word but I am quite confused when I write formal documents.
I do not know exactly when to use the of rather than 's. For example:





The value of the mean or The mean's value.



The domains of statistics or The statistics' domains.



The example of data or data's example.




I have searched on Google. Both cases seem widely used on many websites, so I do not know which one is well received by native speakers. Are there guidelines for choosing one over the other?



Answer



My English professor told me that we use of when we are talking about something that is part of or related to another thing. For example, ceiling of my room or subject of the lecture. But 's is used when we are speaking about the ownership relationships and usually related to a person. For example Ali's car or students' room.



But according to my researches, we use of to indicate that one thing is either related to or about something else. On the other hand we use 's to show that two or more things are part of or under the ownership of each other in some ways.


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