When to Use Of and When to Use the Possessive Form Learn English Grammar

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hi everybody my name is alicia in this

lesson i’m going to talk about

when to use apostrophe s and when to use

of let’s get started first i want to

talk about the situations

when we use apostrophe s so

we commonly refer to this as the

possessive

form so we attach apostrophe s

to some noun or a noun phrase we use

apostrophe s

when we’re talking about something that

belongs to

another person so when i say something

that belongs to another person

this can mean an object like a pen

or a shirt or it can mean something

about that person’s

physical appearance physical appearance

means the way they look

or it can be about their personality

so what kind of personality does that

person have

what are their characteristics so we use

apostrophe s

when we’re referring to these kinds of

things

relating to people let’s look at some

examples of this

first this group of examples features

apostrophe s including an

object so for example my brother’s

car my mom’s favorite

album or my friend’s keys

we use apostrophe s because this is an

object that belongs to a person

if i used of in these sentences it would

sound very

unnatural for example the car

of my brother or the favorite album of

my mom

or the keys of my friend

it sounds very unnatural to use these

kinds of patterns so because we’re

talking about

objects that belong to a person

use the possessive form this apostrophe

let’s look at some more examples these

are things

again objects that belong to another

person

in this case not just my my my

but another person outside us for

example

your roommate’s computer

or his girlfriend’s water bottle so

again we’re talking about objects that

belong

to a person even if that person is

outside us

unrelated to us we use apostrophe s

to naturally show possession to

naturally show ownership

finally down here let’s look at some

examples that

talk about someone’s personality or

their characteristics

my friend’s personality or

his mother’s cleanliness

or his father’s beard this is not a

personality point this is a physical

appearance

point but you can see how in all of

these example sentences we continue to

use the apostrophe s

to show ownership so this my friend’s

personality means

the personality belonging to my friend

or his mother’s cleanliness

this shows the cleanliness belonging to

his mother

this beard here belongs to the speaker’s

friends perhaps father so we’re using

this apostrophe s to show

ownership of something so please make

sure to use apostrophe s

in situations such as these

another important point about apostrophe

s use

is that apostrophe s is commonly used

with

time periods so time periods means like

days or weeks or months

for example it can also mean points in

time

or periods of time in a day for example

this morning’s meeting here

morning is my time period or my point in

time in this case

this morning’s meeting this means the

meeting that happened

this morning or the meeting that’s going

to happen this morning

so we can think of this as a meeting

belonging to

this morning we use apostrophe s to show

this we do not say

the meeting of this morning it sounds

very unnatural

another example the year’s best

music the year’s best music so here

i have this time period the year the

last year or this year perhaps

apostrophe s best music so this means

the best music belonging to the year

we would not say the best

music of the year necessarily i suppose

you could

but in lots of marketing materials you

see this apostrophe

s used it kind of shows a little bit of

closeness

that possessive form okay the next one

this evening’s menu this evening’s

menu so again the menu which belongs to

this evening this is one that you might

also see

used with the of pattern perhaps so

using the of pattern

kind of makes things like this sound a

little bit more formal

or a little bit more polite so for

example

the menu of this evening might not be so

natural

or the menu of the evening might be

something you could hear

but the reason that we don’t use of as

often perhaps

in situations such as these is because

it tends to make the situation

sound a little more formal or a little

more polite

so when i said in this example sentence

the best music

of the year you might hear that for

example

at an award ceremony like the

best artist of the year or artist of the

year something like that has a little

bit of

importance to it when we want to give

more importance to something we might

use the of pattern

so these are two situations where you

might see that

we would not do it in the situations

i’ve talked about or the situations i

spoke about earlier

when talking about things belonging to

people there are some cases

where we might use an of pattern when

talking about time periods

so these are maybe a couple of cases

where you may see

of used okay so we can use this with

time periods as well and it is commonly

used with time periods

let’s compare this then to situations

where we use

of so of is

used when explaining something that is

part

of or belongs to something

larger so no yes i’m using this belongs

to here

but this is for like objects so not

things that belong to people

this is for like uh perhaps

organizations

or as i said objects let’s take a look

at some examples of this

here the leader of the group or

the end of the video or the top

of the mountain so in each of these

situations

we’re expressing like a relationship

between a part

and a hole in the first example sentence

the group the group is my whole

and the leader is one part so we often

use

of when we’re talking about like the top

person

in an organization or in a group so this

is why we use like leader of the group

or if you’ve watched the video about

using of on this channel

the queen of england or the head of the

company

those are expressions we use to talk

about the top person in a group so they

are part

of a group or an organization the second

example

the end of the video refers to one

part of the video so if we watch the

video watch the video watch the video

this part here is the end part of

the video we use of to show that

relationship

finally the top of the mountain the top

of the mountain

again if we imagine a mountain and we

imagine one part

we can describe that with of connecting

that name top to the name of the whole

mountain the top of the mountain of

course there are some cases where we

choose to

phrase things a little bit differently

for example

the mountaintop is a word but

in these cases it’s more natural to use

than it is to use apostrophe s

so for example if i said the mountain’s

top

it wouldn’t sound as natural as the top

of the mountain

if i said the videos end it wouldn’t

sound as natural as the end of the video

the group’s leader could be okay

because it’s related to a person but you

might hear this one a little more often

the leader of the group

okay with that in mind let’s look at

another way that we use

of we use of when explaining what

something is

made from so we use this when talking

about material so if i want to talk

about the material

my shirt is made from i could use of to

describe that

let’s look at some examples though a

necklace of

gold a sweater made of wool

shoes made of leather so here in these

examples

i’m talking about materials gold wool

and leather you’ll notice that i’ve got

made in parentheses here

we can drop that made because this use

of of

is showing us what something is made

from so

not everybody chooses to include made

but you can

um so a necklace of gold means a

necklace made from

gold a sweater made of wool

means a sweater made from wool so that’s

another way to say it

both are fine you can choose which you

prefer shoes

made of leather so we’re connecting the

material

to the object with of here

so again this is not a situation where

we would use this possessive form

because actually here there’s no

possession

happening the necklace is not possessing

gold or the sweater is not possessing

wool

rather we’re talking about the

components the pieces

that work together to create this other

thing so

definitely do not use apostrophe s

in situations such as this so

i hope that this lesson gives you a good

guideline for when to use apostrophe s

and when to use of remember apostrophe s

is great to use and very natural to use

when you’re talking about people and

things that belong to people

remember use of when you’re talking

about something that is

part of something else or when you’re

describing

the materials that are used to make

something

so if you have any questions or comments

or if you want to practice making some

sentences

with this grammar please feel free to do

so in the comment section of this video

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for some other things that can help you

with your english studies thanks very

much for watching this lesson and i will

see you again

soon bye-bye

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