We’re living in a world that can easily give rise to negativity but being doubly negative is something we should really try to avoid! … Well, at least in English grammar.

What is a double negative? It’s when you find two negative parts in a sentence (where one is enough).

For example, ‘She didn’t know nothing before she went to university.’ In this sentence the verb is already in the negative – didn’t know – and is followed by another negative – nothing. So how could we change this sentence to make it correct? Try changing one or other of the parts:

• She knew nothing before she went to university.
• She didn’t know anything before she went to university.

Other words like nothing to watch out for are not, hardly, barely and scarcely :

• ‘Not all my friends don’t have cars’ would be better as ‘not all my friends have cars’.
• ‘They hardly ate nothing would’ be better as ‘they hardly at anything’.
• ‘She couldn’t barely stand up’ would be better as ‘she could barely stand up’.
• ‘She wouldn’t scarcely give me the time of day’ would be better as ‘she would scarcely give me the time of day’.

Some of these may look pretty obvious but you’d be amazed how often I am confronted with the double negative coming from my native English speaking clients and my foreign clients alike.

One of the most asked questions that we get at english4today.com is about the placement of the apostrophe for possessives. This is a ‘young’ blog so I’m going to answer it here for Trish Upham from Australia who writes:

I am a Virtual Assistant working with lawyers and regularly come across the problem of multiple possessives in legal documents. For instance, when a group of people is buying a company, none of us can agree on the correct way to type something like "Smith, Dunn, & Bradstreet’s ownership". Or should it be "Smith’s, Dunn’s, and Bradstreet’s"???

I would REALLY appreciate some expert opinion on this.

Thanks in anticipation!

Starting with your question first, Trish, the rule is that

• For joint ownership, show possession only on the last noun.
  So your second example,’Smith, Dunn, & Bradstreet’s ownership’, is correct. As is,
  There is always a great atmosphere at Joan and Max’s parties.
• For individual possession, show possession on all of the nouns.
  Maire’s, Pierre’s and Hubert’s cars were all burnt during the recent riots in Paris.
  Smith’s, Dunn’s and Bradstreet’s lives may not have been wildy exciting.

Some other rules for the possesive apostrophe are:

• For singular and plural nouns that do not end in -s, form the possessive by
  adding -’s. The women’s shelter, The dog’s bone.
• For singular nouns that end in -s, (whether pronounced or unpronounced), form the possessive by adding -’s. Anthony Hughes’s blog, The class’s teacher.
• For plural nouns that end in –s, form the possessive by adding only an apostrophe.
  The books’ covers were all damaged. The queens’ powers were eroded over the centuries.
• For compound nouns, show possession at the end of the compound.
  The Queen Mary’s last cruise was to New York. The Republic of Congo’s government is not very stable.
• We do not use the possessive apostrophe with possessive pronouns (hers,
  theirs, yours, whose, and its).

Hope that has helped Trish. What is a ‘virtual assistant’ … it sounds like one of those annoying little software beings Microsoft pops up in their programs all the time. If you let me know what it is I’ll put it up here so that we can settle a dispute now raging in our office! I keep telling them that those Microsoft animated bugs would not be able to email us…

Yesterday, I answered a short question about contractions and got this reply from Vivien:

Thank you for providing the term and meaning of ‘contractions’. Currently, I am working with an American ‘.com’ company that is young and  struggling to be taken seriously. In reviewing their written correspondance to their customers I noticed they frequently use contractions. This is one of the business communication practices (amoung others) I will be attempting to dissuade them from using. Contractions are acceptable in casual communications however, are generally out of place in business communications. Thank you for your time, Miss Viv

It’s a pretty formal sort of reply by today’s standards using words that you could probably simplify to say the same thing – it says something about Vivien – at least about what she thinks is ‘correct’ business English. But is she right? This was my reply to her:

Dear Miss Viv – that really depends on the image that your company wants to project. English, like advertising, is capable of carrying a lot of sub-text ‘message’ and contractions can, of course, carry a message about the organization. If you want to create the idea that your customers are your friends then contractions would be one way of helping to create that impression. The more structured the English becomes the more formal will be the presentation and image – we are not living in an age where ‘formal’ is equated with ‘good business’ – take Skype as an example… young and onetime struggling, now rich and global and still using contractions!