Remember the movie Runaway
Bride starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere? That’s okay; I mostly don’t
either. There’s just one part that stuck with me: Richard Gere pointed out that in every
relationship Julia is in she orders the same egg dish as her boyfriend. I think
that stuck with me because I had a friend who did the same thing but with beer.
Most of us have to change a little when we get into a
relationship—it’s what they call compromise—but some people really change when,
as we say in the grammar industry, they go from singular to plural.
Some words do too. When most words
change from singular to plural, they simply accumulate an s (e.g., egg becomes eggs). But some words change in more
dramatic ways. When man and woman become plural, they exchange their
a’s for e’s; and when child becomes
plural, it goes crazy and slaps on ren.
And it’s cool; I’m not judging. Sometimes it’s good to make
drastic changes. Maybe Julia never would have tried poached eggs and then
realized she loved them, which is great because they are so much healthier than
fried.
So why do I bring this up?
Because I saw this the other day:
Most of the time, we place the apostrophe outside the s when we are showing plural possession.
For example:
She always
copies her boyfriends’ egg orders.
Because the apostrophe is outside the s, it’s clear to the reader that we are referring to the egg orders of more than one
of her boyfriends, as opposed to:
She always
copies her boyfriend’s egg orders.
Because the apostrophe is before the s, it shows the reader that we are talking about the egg orders of only one
boyfriend.
So what’s the problem with placing the apostrophe after the s in children,
you might ask. It’s plural after all.
Well, here’s the thing: The word children is only plural. We can never say there is one children. Well, it’s a free country;
we can say it, but we’d be
grammatically incorrect. There’s no reason to place the apostrophe
after the s; we already know we are
talking about more than one child. Therefore, the correct way to express it is “Children’s
Education Rooms.”
Although, now I am totally freaked out about what kind of education
these children are getting!
A period would be too much of a break. A comma wouldn’t be
enough.
