Difficult one (well in my opinion)

aspirant2011 wrote:

Ashley@VeritasPrep wrote: On a different and minor note, there's another error in the original sentence: it should start Americans' rather than American's, since this is a plural possessive (the love affair belongs to plural Americans).

Hi Ashley,

Does it mean that the sentence is wrong because of american's????????

Well yes, it definitely does, but the plural possessive versus singular possessive isn't tested on the GMAT. The rule is pretty simple, though: if you want a plural possessive, you pluralize the word FIRST, THEN add the 's, and if after doing so you wind up with an s's (which will be true almost all the time, with the exception of the case of irregular plurals that don't end in s), you drop the s after the '. I don't know whether this error was in whatever the original source was or whether the original source said either "America's" or "Americans'" and it was just a typo made in transfer to the forum.