This morning, I received the following question about compound possessives from William Tate:

What about when yourself and someone else are in possession. Do you say “me and Sarah’s house” or “Mine and Sarah’s house” or “Sarah’s and my house”?

In this case, I would choose “Sarah’s and my house.”

To review, the rule for indicating joint possession for compound nouns is to make only the second noun possessive by adding ’s to the end. But when one of the possessors is a personal pronoun, it doesn’t make sense to follow that rule. Here’s how the online Guide to Grammar and Writing puts it:

When one of the possessors in a compound possessive is a personal pronoun, we have to put both possessors in the possessive form or we end up with something silly: “Bill and my car had to be towed last night.”

* Bill’s and my car had to be towed last night.
* Giorgio’s and her father was not around much during their childhood.

If this second sentence seems unsatisfactory, you might have to do some rewriting so you end up talking about their father, instead, or revert to using both names: “Giorgio and Isabel’s father wasn’t around much . . . . ” (and then “Giorgio” will lose the apostrophe +s).

Also keep in mind that “me” is the objective form, not the possessive form, of “I.”

Finally, according to the Chicago Manual of Style, “mine” is the absolute, or independent, form:

[Mine] can stand alone without a noun . . . The independent form does not require an explicit object: the thing possessed may be either an antecedent or something understood {this dictionary is mine} {this cabin of yours} {Where is hers?}.

Cheers,

Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio