Sentence Correction

After the Vietnam war Bettye Granther, a U.S. Army nurse, continued her efforts on behalf of injured Vietnamese children, providing medical care, helping to reunite estranged families, and the establishment of a fund for the children's future education.

(A) the establishment of a fund for the children's future education

(B) the establishing of a fund for the future education of children

(C) establishing a fund for the children's future education

(D) establishing a fund for the childrens' future education

(E) the establishment of a fund for the childrens' future education


[spoiler]Preety simple but way to frustrating for the apostrophe thing. Need to know the difference between children's and childrens' [/spoiler]

children is the plural form of child. its possessive is written as children's....childrens' is wrong. hope it helps.

but I still have a doubt. the possesive of it is its .when we write it's that means it is and it no longer remains a possesive. under similar logic wouldn't children's mean children are or is ?

sarthak wrote:but I still have a doubt. the possesive of it is its .when we write it's that means it is and it no longer remains a possesive. under similar logic wouldn't children's mean children are or is ?

You are correct the possessive form of it is "its" but here "it" is singular.

What Soumyo said above is the possessive form of plural which we need in the original sentence.

Children is plural of child, even though we cannot write "childrens future" adding "s" to plural doesn't make it possessive.

Childrens' is out of scope. The better form is children's future with an apostrophe "s"

so for any noun is noun' this form is incorrect ? like trees' ,hotels' etc. yda i came across another similar question (will post it in another thread) which has a similar construction

sarthak wrote:so for any noun is noun' this form is incorrect ? like trees' ,hotels' etc. yda i came across another similar question (will post it in another thread) which has a similar construction

The simple way you can remember when to use nouns' and noun's is :

Rule 1 : If plural nouns end in "s" ----- >add only an apostrophe:

Singers - Singers' voices
cousins - The cousins' favorite uncle
brothers - brothers' dream

Note : here the actual form is "Singers's voices, cousins's favorite , brothers's dream. But we avoid writing an "s" after an apostrophe in written English.

Rule 2 :If plural nouns does not end in "s" ----->add an apostrophe and "s."

Men - Men's clothing
Children - Children's books
Women - Women's
singer - singer's
cousin - cousin's
brother - brother's

Now in our question, it is given "children" without an "s" ,so according to the above rule, we should add an apostrophe and "s" (rule 2)

children -- children's

In case it was trees - then it will be trees' (since we have "s" and plural of tree is "trees")-(rule1)
hotels -- hotels' (rule 1)
hotel -- hotel's (rule 2)

So it depends upon the question stem which rule does it follow

Atleast this is the way I remember I hope it helps!

thank you . its clear to me now ..

Isn't this question a classic example of parallelism.

helping to reunite estranged families and providing medical care are simple gerunds
hence they need to be made parallel simple gerund establishing a fund .

a> and e> have an Action noun - establishment. action nouns and simple gerunds can't be parallel. action nouns can be parallel only to complex gerund

b> complex gerund - the establishing of a fund . This can't be parallel to simple gerunds

C> and d> have a simple gerund establishing a fund .

(C)..pretty simple