My young nephew signs his messages “Your’s Nephew, Lester”. Shouldn’t it be “Your” & if so, why?
Favorite Answer
The reason is as follows:
Yours (not your’s) is a pronoun used to indicate the one or ones belonging to you: The larger boots are yours.
Your is a form of the possessive case of “you” used as an attributive adjective: Your jacket is in that closet.
“Your” is an adjective. It requires a noun. “Your’s” is sort of like a pronoun. Thus, while “Your house is your’s,” makes sense to the ear, “Your’s house is your,” does not.
Your’s truly, or truly your’s makes sense in that context.
In times past, with syntax like that he would be lucky to land a job as a farm hand. Today, hardly anybody in the United States speaks proper English. But that’s because we’ve forced our teachers to show students how to properly mark the correct box on some standardized test rather than how to read, write, to research, to absorb information, and to make intelligent decisions based on that information.
Maybe we ought to be grateful hat he doesn’t sign them “You’res” or “urs” or “urz”.
Yours is possessive and is only used if the thing possessed is not named: “Whose book is this? Is it yours?”
It should be “Your Nephew.”
Yours
Nephew Lester.
Alternatively, it can be
Your nephew,
Lester.
It should be “Your Nephew”…