{"id":157,"date":"2014-05-12T12:53:10","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T02:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/?p=157"},"modified":"2017-03-04T13:17:06","modified_gmt":"2017-03-04T02:17:06","slug":"the-difference-between-whose-and-whos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/journal\/notes\/the-difference-between-whose-and-whos\/","title":{"rendered":"The difference between whose and who’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n TLDR:<\/strong> Whose<\/em> is reserved for the possessive meaning ‘belonging to which person’. Who’s<\/em> is a contraction.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These two words, like with its<\/em> and it’s<\/em>, is an example of an exception to the apostrophe rule when using possessives. Just as its<\/em> is the possessive form of it<\/em>, so is whose<\/em> the possessive form of who<\/em>.<\/p>\n

whose (possessive)\u2014belonging to which person<\/p>\n

\n ‘Whose lunch box is this?’ the teacher asked.<\/em><\/p>\n

The children scratched their heads, wondering whose it was.<\/em><\/p>\n

Peter Johnson was a very important businessman whose particular attention Charlotte did not readily favour.<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

who’s (contraction)\u2014who is, who has<\/p>\n

\n ‘Who’s left their toys lying all over the floor?’ Mother asked wearily.<\/em><\/p>\n

‘Who’s that strange man?’<\/em><\/p>\n

My boss, who’s never around, nevertheless makes his presence felt.<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unlike other examples of a possessive pronoun (e.g. John’s), whose<\/em> does not require an apostrophe, just like his<\/em> or hers<\/em>. An easy way to distinguish which one is the best to use is to remember that who’s<\/em> is a contraction. If expanding who’s<\/em> back into who is<\/em> or who has<\/em> leaves your sentence sounding a bit like this, ‘Who is lunch box is this?’ or ‘The children scratched their heads, wondering who has it was’, then it becomes blindingly obvious that who’s<\/em> was not<\/strong> the correct word to use!<\/p>\n

Happy writing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most common mixups I’ve come across.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/carmelsealey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}