Whose luggage is it anyway?

One of our readers, Marc, wrote in with this question:

‘Should it be you and your partner’s luggage or your and your partner’s luggage? As in: “We were sorry to hear about the loss of you and your partner’s luggage on your recent flight.” The first one sounds right, but I’m not sure!’

Indeed, the first one does sound OK on first hearing, and is probably how it would come out in speech. But spoken grammatical mistakes are so much more easily forgiven (not to mention forgotten) than written ones. And in fact the second version – your and your partner’s luggage – is the right one.

What we’re looking at here is a compound (or joint) possessive, which is used when possessions belong to more than one person (or thing).

Apostrophes in compound possessives: one or two?

Whether you should use one or two apostrophes in compound possessives depends on whether the things possessed are owned jointly or separately. If it’s jointly, use one. For example:

I had to shield my eyes from the light reflecting off Brad and Angelina’s gleaming white teeth.

Leaving aside the undercurrent of jealousy in that sentence, you may notice that it seems to suggest Brad and Ange share a set of teeth. Who knows, years from now, that may be true. In the meantime, two apostrophes are needed – one per set of perfect teeth:

The sheer beauty of Brad’s and Angelina’s gleaming white teeth brought tears to my eyes.

Personal pronouns in compound possessives

When one of the entities in possession is a personal pronoun (ie you, me, we, etc), you always need to use the possessive (ie your, my, our, etc), or you end up with some pretty funny meanings.

For example, returning to Marc’s question, if you use you instead of your, what the sentence literally means is that on the recent flight Marc himself was lost, along with his partner’s luggage, rather than the luggage belonging to each of them.

And if that’s the case, perhaps I might recommend my company’s and my favourite lawyer …