@daemon has done this twice recently, and I have a similar technique for inverted commas of possession, so thought I would start a thread to accumulate the goodness. Who / whom: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/who-or-whom.139610/#post-1364360 Was / were: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/was-were.140690/#post-1359108 Possessive inverted commas: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/rephrasing-sentences-to-work-out-what-you-should-do.140972/#post-1364377
To work out where to place a possessive inverted comma, rephrase the sentence to add an "of" pre-subject, then add the apostrophe before the s back in the original sentence. Which doesn't even make sense to me. eg: I pulled the girls hair. (singular girl) I pulled the hair of the girl. ==> I pulled the girl's hair. I pulled the girls hair. (plural girls) I pulled the hair of the girls. ==> I pulled the girls's hair. / I pulled the girls' hair. is also accepted to avoid the s's construct. She's the cats mother. She's the mother of the cat. ==> She's the cat's mother. a womans hat a hat of a woman ==> a woman's hat the bosss wife the wife of the boss ==> the boss'(s) wife the bosses wives the wives of the bosses ==> the bosses' wives (or the bosses's wives but no, just no) Mrs. Changs house the house of Mrs. Chang ==> Mrs. Chang's house guys night out night out of the guys ==> guys' night out I am currently working on my second books first draft I am currently working on the first draft of my second book ==> I am currently working on my second book's first draft John and Marys house The house of (John and Mary) ==> John and Mary's house Someone mentioned this to me in my final year of school and it's stuck. Hope it is of some help.
The way I usually rephrase sentences like this is by separating them into simple sentences (or as close as possible). So much grammatical confusion is due to conjunctions and pronouns in subordinate clauses (e.g. the "who/whom" issue). Replacing a pronoun with its antecedent, or with another pronoun, forces you to think about what it refers to. Turning a clause into a sentence forces you to think about how it relates to another clause.
