John D. Burger <john at mitre dot org> wrote: > Thus, I would have an issue with the argument that the apostrophe is > merely part of the spelling of the word "hill's". There is no such > word.
I think the folks who make Science Diet dog and cat food might disagree: http://www.hillspet.com More seriously, I thought I had heard that grammarians were easing up on the old rule that inanimate objects could not take the possessive. Thus you can now write sentences such as "The hill's slope was too steep for John to climb" without being rapped on the knuckles. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California