The Grammar Doctor

Q. Should there be an apostrophe s in Davids in the following sentence?
Bob will be a rival competitor of Davids in the competition.

A. Good question. I doubled checked this one in Gregg's Reference Manual, which says, "The object of the preposition 'of' should not ordinarily be in the possessive form, since the 'of' phrase as a whole expresses possession."

A better way to do this would be :
Bob will be David's rival in the competition. (This version also gets rid of the awkward repetition of competitor/competition.)


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