Hey

I don't know where to put this, but is it "days' worth of clothing" (plural, word before it is "several") or is it "days worth of clothing"?

For a question that's not likely to generate much discussion, I believe that the proper place would be the "Random Questions" thread, near the top of the first page in Writer's Block.

To address your question, I'm honestly not sure. My intuition is to use the apostrophe—"this is clothing from/for several days". An argument might be made for analogy with providing something to someone: "This is food for John"/"This is John's food"; "This is clothing enough for several days"/"This is several days' worth of clothing".

However, do I stand to be corrected by other posters.

edited 20th Apr '15 3:38:54 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

The former.

It's always "something's worth of whatever". In this case, the "something" in question are days and the "whatever" in question is clothing.

This means that you end up with "days' worth of clothing", as the word "days" is already plural and thus you only add an apostrophe rather than an apostrophe and an "s" (so you end with "days'", rather than the seemingly-expected "days's".

And while I'm at it, the fact that enough people use the latter version that some people think it might actually be correct makes me a bit scared of where this world is headed.

Anyway, it is possible for something like the latter version to be correct; this happens when the word immediately preceding the word "worth" is a hyphenated compound.

For example, you could have "three days' worth of clothes". If you made "three days" into a hyphenated thingy (yes, I know it's not officially called that way), this construct ("three-day") could be used to rewrite the above sentence as "three-day worth of clothes"; this construct would also be used as a singular—rather than plural—word, as demonstrated. I could explain why exactly that is and all that, but the basic point is made and you can always ask when in doubt so I'll stop now instead of confounding you more.

edited 21st Apr '15 12:52:14 PM by Kazeto

^ I'm sorry to sound harsh, but "days's " is never right as the possessive of "days". Consistency does not trump all other rules.

A regular noun which forms its plural by adding "s" or "es" (like day/days, cat/cats, pocket/pockets)is made possessive in the plural form by adding only an apostrophe following the "s", never an apostrophe-s, nor is the apostrophe placed between the "e" and the "s" in the plural. ("Day" = singular / "days" = plural / "day's" = singular possessive / "days' " = plural possessive.

I suspect that what you were confusing this with is the rule that "singular nouns which end in "s" or "es" (lens, bus, scissors) can get either a bare apostrophe or apostrophe-s to form the singular possessive." In this case, personal preference and consistency are the deciding factors — what you do to one, do to all.

Oh, you are right, Madrugada. I mistook rules for singular and plural words ending with an "s" when writing the above. I can offer the fact that I never added an "s" after the apostrophe to plural forms anyway, and since it was deemed correct I didn't really pay that much attention to the specific rules about it. But yeah, my bad, I should have double-checked.

So yeah, when the word is singular, then whichever, but be consistent (though it is preferred that the "s" after the apostrophe is added, according to CMoS); but when the word is plural, unless it is an exception, there's just an apostrophe and no "s" added after it. I'd corrected that bit in the previous post.

And yeah, those were indeed the rules I was thinking about. So you suspect correctly. In any case, thanks; my pride can take a few hits if that means I'll have a chance to correct my mistakes.

edited 21st Apr '15 1:01:21 PM by Kazeto