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Subject:Rule about not using possessive? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 6 Jul 2001 09:55:30 -0400
Elizabeth Estep <<... questioned a change my editor had made, and now she's
questioning herself. She swears that at some point she learned that
possessives are inappropriate in technical writing, but now she can neither
remember the logic behind this "rule" nor find a source for it. >>
It's not a _rule_; it's a style _choice_, and probably a bad one for
competent writers to use as standard operating procedure. The reasons I've
seen given to justify this rule include:
- the fact that using a possessive can be seen to personify something
inanimate: anthropomorphizing is a bad idea in general, but inadvertently
doing so only becomes a risk you're careless with your possessives
- the risk of confusing translators: any translator who doesn't know how
possessives are formed in English should find another profession. Of course,
if you (as the writer) don't know the difference between its and it's, then
yes, you're going to confuse everyone, and should avoid possessives.
- "that's the way it's always been done": some old Thistlebottoms feel
uncomfortable attributing a possessive to anything inanimate, despite the
lack of any grammatical justification for this opinion
About the only good reason to avoid possessives is the risk of confusing a
reader with poor English skills (e.g., someone whose native language isn't
English, a low-literacy audience), but even then, the problem only arises if
you're sloppy about clearly attributing the possessive to the right object.
You can certainly write around this by using genitives (e.g., the Word menus
rather than Word's menus), but that's not necessary in most cases. So on the
whole, it's not a guideline you really need to follow. Moreover, careful use
of possessive makes your writing seem more fluent and idiomatic, and that
can be a very good thing indeed for most audiences.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
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"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words;
on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them
unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."-- James D. Nicoll
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