grammar opinion request

[ajva]

Something I've been thinking about for a while: does the impersonal third person possessive require an apostrophe? It seems it is always written without. Can you give me a reference as to why this is correct? For example:

This is a guide for how to live ones life.

As opposed to

This is a guide for how to live one's life.

References welcome.

Comments

[shadowdaddy.livejournal.com]

No references, but I vote that the same rules apply as for "its."

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Yes, well that's certainly a justifiable perspective, and the obvious reference. I'm interested to find out if there's a hard and fast rule about this...

Grammar nazi

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

But he's wrong, "its" is the exeception. Eye Tee Apostrophe Ess always means It Is and never Property Of It, the cat extended its claws, etc.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

That's a interesting question - I always assumed it was "one's" myself, but since it's a pronoun, it may be like the other pronouns. Being an apostrophe pedant, I hope I haven't got it wrong all this time!

Wikipedia says it's "one's", but doesn't give a source for it.

One thing that occurred to me - if it was "ones", then surely that means "ones" must be itself a word, and whilst "its" (along with "yours", "hers" etc) is in the dictionary, I can't find any reference for a word "ones" (at least in answers.com and dictionary.com).

[ajva.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that Wikipedia says that, because it's always been my instinct that that was the case, but I've never actually seen it written like that in practice. I've been wondering whether I should start a stubborn grammar bitch movement in that direction, but I've not been sure if I have any justification for it...

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Also I note there are lots of pronouns that surely use apostrophes - everyone's, somebody's, no one's. Okay, that doesn't answer the question, but presumably means there isn't a simple rule that all pronouns don't have apostrophes?

[ajva.livejournal.com]

"no one's" is obviously the classic one there, isn't it? I do think that we have a case here.

[djm4]

It takes an apostrohpe. Fowler says so, and that's always good enough for me unless I have a very good reason to think otherwise.

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

I've always seen it with the apostrophe...

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Ditto, and I agree it should do.

[booklectica]

I've always seen it as 'one's' and if I saw it otherwise I'd assume it was an error.

[juliet]

Ditto.

[hieroglyphe.livejournal.com]

Orthography is an arbitrary symbol system and parasitic on spoken language!

[jhg.livejournal.com]

I shall have to find out what P.G. Wodehouse uses. If it's good enough for him, then that's certainly enough for me.