I think that in the general population these hyphenated words are made
plural and possessive at the end, no matter what sounds right to us.
Edith Wollin

-----Original Message-----
From: Johanna Rubba [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 10:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: doozie question


One of my students stumped me in class yesterday. We were discussing
apostrophe use, and she asked how one would punctuate the possessive
plural of 'brother-in-law', assuming 'brother' carries the plural marker.

Brothers'-in-law        looks terrible to me, but
brothers-in-law's       looks no better.

I think this example is a good argument for shifting the plural to
'brother-in-laws' (I'm kidding, actually, 'brother-in-laws' sounds wrong
to me).

What do you all think?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  *  Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone.  756-259
* E-mail: [log in to unmask] *  Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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