Months worth

[chris]

I am having an argument with myself and also with Word grammar check about the correct use of the apostrophe in these two sentences:

We have six months' stock.

We have six months worth of stock.

The first one is possessive and therefore must have an apostrophe but the second, although it looks substantially the same sentence, I would argue is a simple plural. My argument would be that the apostrophe in the first is to clearly identify 'months' as referring to stock (the next word) and could represent a missing 'of', whereas in the second, the fact that 'stock' is not the next word and the 'worth of' denotes the relationship to stock means that it is a simple plural.

What do you think?

[chris]

Having mulled it over for a while, I am now starting to think the other way!

I'm starting to think that the possessive has now changed to the 'worth' rather than the 'stock'. I think the clincher for me is how I would say it if it was 1 month of stock. Here I think I would say 1 month's stock and since the 'month' has got an s at the end and 1 month can hardly be plural, it must be possessive!

Therefore it must be 1 month's worth of stock.

I think I need to get out more!

Chris

[chas49]

Having mulled it over for a while, I am now starting to think the other way!

I'm starting to think that the possessive has now changed to the 'worth' rather than the 'stock'. I think the clincher for me is how I would say it if it was 1 month of stock. Here I think I would say 1 month's stock and since the 'month' has got an s at the end and 1 month can hardly be plural, it must be possessive!

Therefore it must be 1 month's worth of stock.

I think I need to get out more!

Chris

You are correct about the possessive. I have no idea whether you need to get out more

For a "simple" explanation, see http://www.dreaded-apostrophe.com. (Actually I'm not sure it's simple the way he explains it, but it may help!)