Practice Makes Perfect

Possession

Nouns form the possessivein two ways: (1) they become the object

of the preposition of, or (2) they add the ending -’s(apostrophe

plus -s). Look at these examples:

the roar of a lion a lion’s roar

the color of the book the book’s color

the children of Mrs. Diaz Mrs. Diaz’s children

the prey of the wolves the wolves’ prey

(See Unit 12 regarding punctuation to review the rules for using

the apostrophe.)

The possessive is used to show to whom or to what something

belongs:

This is Ginny’scar.

The kittens of an alley cathave a hard life.

Change the italicized possessive phrase to a possessive ending in -’s.

EXAMPLE: The color of the car is red.

The car’s color is red.

1. The center of the stormwas just north of the city.


2. The condition of the victimswas very serious.


3. I don’t understand the behavior of my classmates.

exercise 16-1

86

Unit 16

05 (077-098) Units 14-19 11/3/04 1:41 PM Page 86

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