The Lemon Fool

When writing about single-sex schools, what would be the correct way to use the apostrophe?

.... found herself employed in a Girls' School.

or

....found herself employed in a Girl's school.

or


....found herself employed in a Girls school.
?

Although I'm usually quite strict about correct punctuation, perhaps this is another example of where the apostrophe could be discarded?

My reasoning being that the school does not belong to the girls, 'Girls School' is more a title/name.

Steve

Wikipedia seems to go with "girl's":

htttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_girls%27_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom

But then, look under entry for West Yorkshire

Context is everything.

Context 1: I have a son and a daughter, they go to different schools. That's my girl's school.
Context 2: Can I send my son there? No, it's a girls' school.
Context 3: Are there single-sex schools in your area? Yes, one boys and three girls.

Or take your pick.

I went to the "XXXX School for Boys"

No apostrophe

XFool wrote:Wikipedia seems to go with "girl's":

htttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_girls%27_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom

But then, look under entry for West Yorkshire

No, it (correctly) goes with girls'. There isn't any girl's in the page.

Corrected url with one less t in the protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_girls%27_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom

Girls school. It looks like "girls" is being used as an adjective for the noun "school", so it shouldn't take the possessive case, therefore no apostrophe. But I'm not certain.

UncleEbenezer wrote:Context 2: Can I send my son there? No, it's a girls' school.

That implies that the school belongs to girls. But rather it is a school for girls. The girls do not own it. So making it possessive doesn't feel right.

That is made explicit in the long form e.g. The Collegiate School for girls. The owner of that school is the local authority, or a church, or a private entity or . . .

If a school is actually owned by a group of girls then you could refer to it as a girls' school, even if that school was only for boys.

mc2fool wrote:

XFool wrote:Wikipedia seems to go with "girl's":

htttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_girls%27_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom

But then, look under entry for West Yorkshire

No, it (correctly) goes with girls'. There isn't any girl's in the page.

Weird. I could have sworn...

Clicking through a random sample of the 28 entries named as a Girls' School in the Wikipedia List of girls' schools in the United Kingdom linked to previously, and going through to the websites of those schools, it's not just the way Wikipedia has them, every single one does indeed name itself as a Girls' School (or Academy). Here's a few:

https://tggsacademy.org/
https://www.harrisdulwichgirls.org.uk/
https://www.bmgs.prospermat.co.uk/
https://www.hgs.herts.sch.uk/
https://nottinghamgirlshigh.gdst.net/
https://sellyparkgirls.org/

Some are part of the Girls' Day School Trust, and then there's Harrogate Ladies' College which doesn't seem to like either girls or school!

I doubt that any of those are owned by the girls/ladies, and as these are educational establishments you'd think they've got it right.

When I worked at University they had a union for the students. For all the students. It was called the Students' Union.
When I started work at a post 16 education college they had a similar collective, originally called the Student Association renamed Student's Union.
I did comment that an A level got you the knowledge to correctly place the apostrophe.

DrFfybes wrote:I went to the "XXXX School for Boys"

No apostrophe

Oh, I remember the XXXX school for Boys.

Some of the teachers should be eligible for parole by now, surely?


Steve

stevensfo wrote:When writing about single-sex schools, what would be the correct way to use the apostrophe?

.... found herself employed in a Girls' School.

or

....found herself employed in a Girl's school.

On reflection I believe either is correct, however the latter is a far more exclusive establishment.

Paul

This is a very subtle distinction which is being lost because people are afraid to omit the apostrophe:

The Parents Evening - on evening for the parents, like 'The Staff Meeting'
The Parents' Evening - an evening belonging to the parents, e.g. the parents' evening was better than the pupils'

martinc wrote:This is a very subtle distinction which is being lost because people are afraid to omit the apostrophe:

The Parents Evening - on evening for the parents, like 'The Staff Meeting'
The Parents' Evening - an evening belonging to the parents, e.g. the parents' evening was better than the pupils'

Yes as I noted above the word is ambiguous. The word "girls' " implies possession but people use (or misuse) the word to mean a school for girls.

There are other examples e.g. "Billy's parents were killed in a car accident and so he lives in an orphans' home". It is clear but technically incorrect, unless the orphans own the home, which seems unlikely.

Most of the time it does not matter as we read through to the correct meaning. But it could be confusing as in a case where a group of girls own a school for boys. In that case using "girls' school" is both correct and misleading at the same time, and so I would instead use "that girls' school for boys".

And why is it a "dog kennel" and not a "dog's kennel" or "dogs' kennel"?

I've found a reference to the rules for apostrophes, which says 'possession' isn't limited to ownership, it also means having a close relationship. The example of a teachers' conference is a similar to the girls' school, as the teachers are attending the conference, not owning it.


"Apostrophe + s to show possession
When we show who owns something or has a close relationship with something, we use an apostrophe + s after the name or the noun. When the noun is plural, we put the apostrophe after the s:

Is that Frank’s camera?
There was a big teachers’ conference last week in Mexico City. (a conference for teachers)"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/gramma ... apostrophe

" We also use possessive ’s to talk about time and duration:
Is that yesterday’s paper?
I’ve only had one week’s holiday so far this year."

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/gramma ... nd-of-mine

I've heard that the teaching of English in schools in England over the decades has alternated between believing that it is necessary to explicitly teach grammar -- including teaching the terms for and use of every type of word, part of speech, clauses, tenses, cases, punctuation, etc, etc, etc -- and believing it wasn't necessary to teach grammar as pupils would pick up the structure of the language organically, without needing to know what a gerund, a phrasal verb or the subjunctive, etc, is.

I was in one of the latter groups (and indeed only learned what those three are as a result of trying to learn Italian as an adult), and so have only just learned, from a little googling, that the possessive, as signified by 's and s', is only one use of the genitive case and most of the other uses of the genitive also employ 's and s'.


https://www.eltconcourse.com/training/inservice/lexicogrammar/genitive.html

Directly relevant to this thread is the following about the descriptive genitive case from the above English Language Teacher training course:

"In this case, paraphrasing usually means a use of some kind of adjectival, classifying or post-modifying expression. For example:
. A Master's degree
refers to the type of degree and could be rephrased using a classifier as
. A post-graduate degree
and
. The teachers' room
as
. The room set aside for teachers
No sense, except very marginally, of possession is involved although the second example could be paraphrased as
. The teachers have a room
but not as
. The teachers own a room."

HTH (Warning: the above linked to page is looong, detailed and loaded with technical grammar terminology that's mostly a head scratcher for this wasn't-taught-grammar boy... )

mc2fool wrote:I've heard that the teaching of English in schools in England over the decades has alternated between believing that it is necessary to explicitly teach grammar -- including teaching the terms for and use of every type of word, part of speech, clauses, tenses, cases, punctuation, etc, etc, etc -- and believing it wasn't necessary to teach grammar as pupils would pick up the structure of the language organically, without needing to know what a gerund, a phrasal verb or the subjunctive, etc, is.

)

I was at the tail end of the explicit teaching so had a brief couple of years of having to parse sentences, the textbook was called something like "A Guide to Standard English" and the editions, that we used in the early 1970s, had been printed in the 1950s with a first imprint years before (School did not go in for buying more up to date textbooks for English though did do so for Mathematics)

Luckily I moved school in 1975 to one where this was not such a fascination, as I never got to grips with the art of breaking down adjective clauses etc from entire sentences, it all, at the time, seemed pointless.

Charlottesquare wrote:

mc2fool wrote:I've heard that the teaching of English in schools in England over the decades has alternated between believing that it is necessary to explicitly teach grammar -- including teaching the terms for and use of every type of word, part of speech, clauses, tenses, cases, punctuation, etc, etc, etc -- and believing it wasn't necessary to teach grammar as pupils would pick up the structure of the language organically, without needing to know what a gerund, a phrasal verb or the subjunctive, etc, is.

)

I was at the tail end of the explicit teaching so had a brief couple of years of having to parse sentences, the textbook was called something like "A Guide to Standard English" and the editions, that we used in the early 1970s, had been printed in the 1950s with a first imprint years before (School did not go in for buying more up to date textbooks for English though did do so for Mathematics)

Luckily I moved school in 1975 to one where this was not such a fascination, as I never got to grips with the art of breaking down adjective clauses etc from entire sentences, it all, at the time, seemed pointless.

That would be "A Study of Standard English" ( Barclay, Knox and Ballantyne. Published by Robert Gibson & Son, Glascow, 1953)

I've still got a copy (printed the 60s) cos we were using it in primary 7 (in preparation for classics in secondary) in the mid 80s and I temporarily had lost the copy I'd been given out - so picked up a replacement from Gibsons (I think it was on the west end of sausage roll st) they used to have secondhand books along with the past papers
- It was a bit fousty even then

I'd be more worried, particularly in this place, about the error(s) in the question that is the thread title.

kempiejon wrote:I did comment that an A level got you the knowledge to correctly place the apostrophe.

But, um, evidently not the adverb.

(never formally learned grammar, just kind-of picked it up).