People, people

I have seen this mistake in print several times recently: peoples’. Although we may write about multiple peoples (“nationalities” would be a synonym), in these cases the writers were referring to many individual persons. The possessive should be people’s. Here is an example sentence: The city staff will listen to people’s ideas about the new park.

Also, I have noticed another possessives error in print several times lately. The possessives of reciprocal pronouns each other and one another need ‘s, not s’. Here is an example: The two mothers looked after each other’s children while they were at the park.

This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Co.; is posted here to provide continuity; and is copyright © 2011 The News & Observer Publishing Company, which reserves the right to remove this post.