another spelling question

reeree

is it others or other's with a comma, its from a poem that contains the line "each others smile"

neverdespairgirl

I think you mean apostrophe, not comma! And that's really a grammar question (which I can help with) rather than a spelling one (where I'd keep very quiet at the back).

Back to the question - neither of your options is definitely right. It should be "each others' smiles", if there are plural smiles and plural others. If there are just two people, it would be "each other's smile"

msb5262

It should be "each other's smile" with an apostrophe...unless there are more than two people involved!

Tropez

It should be "each other's smiles". A singular countable noun should not be used after "each other's" hence "smile" should be made plural and "each other's" is a possessive using the apostrophe.

There's some explanation available on this page.

http://finaltouchproofreadingandediting.com/2010/04/21/even-very-good-writers-get-confused/

A bit more here...
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/each+other

And a brief example on this page...
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/pronouns/reciprocal-pronouns-each-other-and-one-another

Harold12

Other's is used for singular case. example:- one other's. And others is used for plural case. Example:- Many others.

Errata

reeree wrote: »

is it others or other's with a comma, its from a poem that contains the line "each others smile"

If that's how the poet wrote it, that's how the poet wrote it - their poem, their bat, their ball.

angelil

^^ On the internet, though, poems get mangled regularly. And I don't know of any poet that deliberately leaves out apostrophes. You can go and talk to ee cummings about capital letters and Emily Dickinson about random hyphens though

Errata

angelil wrote: »

^^ On the internet, though, poems get mangled regularly. And I don't know of any poet that deliberately leaves out apostrophes. You can go and talk to ee cummings about capital letters and Emily Dickinson about random hyphens though

I've made it a rule in life never to talk to dead people.

securityguy

angelil wrote: »

^^ On the internet, though, poems get mangled regularly. And I don't know of any poet that deliberately leaves out apostrophes.

He's not best known as a poet, but George Bernard Shaw wrote a few. I'm not inclined to scour them, but I bet his attitude to apostrophes was the same as it was in his plays and prose. Although I have found one really, really grim poem about vegetarianism, which would shame a fifth year poetry competition, which uses "we're". But I think his animus was with the possessives, not contractions, so it would be expected.

MrsAtobe

securityguy wrote: »

He's not best known as a poet, but George Bernard Shaw wrote a few. I'm not inclined to scour them, but I bet his attitude to apostrophes was the same as it was in his plays and prose. Although I have found one really, really grim poem about vegetarianism, which would shame a fifth year poetry competition, which uses "we're". But I think his animus was with the possessives, not contractions, so it would be expected.

I'm a bit confused by this post - I read the poem, and the "we're" quoted is a contraction of we are, and presumably used to make the poem scan and is perfectly in context. Am I missing something?

securityguy

MrsAtobe wrote: »

I'm a bit confused by this post - I read the poem, and the "we're" quoted is a contraction of we are, and presumably used to make the poem scan and is perfectly in context. Am I missing something?

Shaw was opposed to apostrophes, which he saw (with some justification) as being an imposition of pedants and, worse, French-speaking pedants. My recollection is that he was more exercised about possessive apostrophes (-'s standing for the Old English genitive ending -es) than about simple contractions like we're. So finding that he wrote we're, especially when as you say that was probably for metrical reasons, doesn't mean he still wouldn't have left it out of "David's trousers" or something.

I think his argument was that as the pronunciation is the same for Davids in "I know three Davids", "David's trousers are blue" and "All three Davids' trousers are blue" then the apostrophe is pointless, while "We are going to a party", "We're going to a party" and "Were we going to a party?" are all pronounced differently, and therefore it serves a purpose. But given the bizarre orthography of some of his writing, this might be granting him a consistency of thought he didn't actually have...