Terribly sorry for my monomania, but these things stick in my head.<\/p>\n
This time, I’m not telling you what I know, really. I’m admitting to a problem. I don’t know how to show possession in certain circumstances.<\/p>\n
But first, let’s talk about the word “who.” Come on, you know you want to.<\/p>\n
“Who” implies a person<\/strong><\/p>\n “The person who<\/strong> ate my chocolate chip cookies will suffer in the ninth circle of hell.”<\/p>\n [Ok, it’s true that lots of people use “that” instead of “who” when writing about a person. This post isn’t about those people.]<\/p>\n Now, when I want to talk about a nonperson, I use “that”:<\/p>\n “The machine that destroyed my cookies will be disassembled and sent to Tatooine.”<\/p>\n With me so far? “Who” = Person. “That” = Not a person. Onward…<\/p>\n Possession!<\/strong><\/p>\n We have to use “whose” sometimes.<\/p>\n “Paul, whose<\/strong> car is blue, dislikes yellow cars.”<\/p>\n That sounds about right. Paul is still a person, despite his unyielding opposition to canary-colored cars.<\/p>\n But what do I say about a nonperson here:<\/p>\n “The building, whose<\/strong> windows are mirrored, stays cool in the summer.”<\/p>\n Whose? Really? That just doesn’t sound right for an inanimate object. (I’ve even seen “which’s” before, but not from a native English speaker.)<\/p>\n As far as I can tell, “whose” is our only option other than rewriting it.<\/p>\n Am I wrong?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Terribly sorry for my monomania, but these things stick in my head. This time, I’m not telling you what I know, really. I’m admitting to a problem. I don’t know how to show possession in certain circumstances. But first, let’s talk about the word “who.” Come on, you know you want to. “Who” implies a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languagelit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}