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
s
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
of
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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