The "Magic & Tragic" column in The Birmingham News this week got the ITS straight (without the apostrophe when possessive), but failed to use an apostrophe correctly in a different incidence of possession in the same sentence. Here is what I read:
UAB wants one of its former scientists research papers to be retracted because of concerns about fabricated findings.
Oops. Not only is it necessary to show that ITS means belonging to UAB, but it is also necessary to show that the research papers in question belong to a scientist. It DOES get complicated because you have a reference to "one" and then to a group of "scientists" and then to the "papers." The "to be" phrase also complicates the sentence.
My suggestion would be to untangle things before deciding how best to show that the papers belong to the one former scientist. I would rewrite the sentence this way:
UAB wants the research papers of one of its former scientists retracted because of concerns about fabricated findings.
Written this way, I conclude that the apostrophe is not needed, but the sentence is now grammatically correct, and we know that the writer is referring to ONE scientist and a GROUP of that person's papers. Did you get that?
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
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