Patricia Harrelson

I always pause when faced with a possessive construction that involves two people. Do you add the apostrophe “s” to both names or only to the latter one? Somewhere along the line I learned to put it on both names, but I was never confident about this usage.

Then the other day, I received an email message from my favorite and most trusted editor Anne in which she wrote this: “Andy and Connie’s address.” I quickly dashed off a reply asking her to tell me the rule for this double possession construction, and here is her answer:

If two people own something together (it belongs to them as a couple), then you only use the possessive for the latter one. If two people own equal shares of something separately, then both get the possessive; both also get the possessive if the items are separate.

Patricia is Andy and John’s sister.
Chris is Andrea’s and Skylar’s mother. (not the best example, maybe, but I’m trying to show that this construction comes in handy with step-families)
We went to Connie’s and Jack’s party (i.e. we went to Connie’s party and then we went to Jack’s party).

No more pauses on this one for me. Now I can make my mark (or not) with confidence. Or can I? Shouldn’t “party” be “parties” in the last example? Better dash off another email.