Ok, this is fairly trivial, but it’s been bugging me since lunch - almost 3 hours now!
We’re all familiar with the common “No Smoking” sign, but today I saw the expanded version, “We appreciate your not smoking”, and it got me wondering…
“Your” has got to be wrong - it’s a possessive, right? But “you’re” -> “We appreciate you are not smoking”? Maybe, but that sounds a little awkward, and besides the sign is meant to say “Put out the smokes”, not “We’re happy you did.”
If I were to say it I probably would say “yer not smoking”, but I suspect that if I were writing it I would say “We appreciate you not smoking.”
You use the possessive before that gerund or participle thingie. My coming up with this response is an example of my taking a big risk of my being wrong, but with the possibility of your finding an answer that is satisfactory.
I think it is trying to say that the sign appreciates the action of smoking that you are not in possession of. Sort of. It makes sense to me but it’s hard to explain. They word it so it fits on the sign well and loses some words. “We appreciate your act of not smoking.” That’s kind of how I read it. You can possess actions, in a sense, if you’re doing them.
In that context, “your not smoking” is, in fact, correct. “Smoking” is a gerund, which means it’s basically a noun in that sentence, and therefore, grammatically, “your” becomes a possessive adjective. The “not” just makes it harder to see.
For example, consider the following: “Your swearing offends me.” - “I am frightened by his driving.” - “It was his jumping on the chair that broke it.” Awkward construction, but grammatically correct.
Most people don’t talk like this, of course, and the application of this rule can sometimes be sort of subtle, depending on the circumstances. It seems to me that this is one of those things that is generally handled so informally in day-to-day speech that we’re more used to its being wrong than right.
Hey, that last sentence above provides a good example. Most folks, I think, would say, incorrectly, “We’re more used to it being wrong than right.” But so many people do it so frequently that we hardly ever notice the error, except when we see it in writing.
“you” would be correct before “not smoking” if “not smoking” were a clause in opposition preceded by a comma - “we would appreciate you - we would not appreciate smoking”.
I always use the possessive pronoun before a gerund, even in speech, but it’s something of an affectation as I don’t usually hear it from others.
Did you bother to read any of the posts to this thread which explained that “We appreciate your not smoking” is correct? Are you for some reason dissatisfied with this explanation?
It’s similar to that argument over “You’ve got a friend”. Should it really be “You have a friend?” Or, maybe “You’ve a friend”?
Sometimes, the rules get bent in these phrases generally deemed “commercial English”…perhaps also the culprit for introducing “ain’t” into our language.
I believe that the grammatical rule (which irritatingly is seemingly often ignored these days), is simply that one should use a possessive before a gerund. Hence, ‘your not smoking’. A gerund is a noun, and one possesses nouns (your car, your coffee, your not smoking).
I see now that a similar situation accounts for a lot of the trouble people have with they’re and their.
If I were writing out the smoking sign, I would use your. It’s definitely correct. But in more everyday language I would use the objective form: * I think it’s sad that you feel you can’t go to the zoo without it being for your kids’ sake.* It really should be its, but it just seems too … fussy or something.
Just in case this helps anyone… a ‘gerund’ is sometimes loosely referred to as ‘a verbal noun’. In other words, it is derived from a ‘doing’ word or phrase, but in the sentence under discussion it plays the part of a noun.
In this case, the sign writer is referring to the fact (or the assumption!) that you are complying with the rules and not smoking. While ‘smoking’ is a verb, and ‘not smoking’ is the negative form, in this sentence the sign writer is referring to your action of ‘not smoking’, or your status as a person who is not smoking. Hence the ‘not smoking’ part fulfils the role of a noun.
Just about everyone has touched on the correct answer.
The correct form is indeed: We appreciate your not smoking
Here’s why: appreciate as it is used here is a transitive verb, that is to say, a verb which takes an object. One must appreciate something, one cannot (grammatically anyway) simply appreciate.
The ungrammatical formation “We appreciate you not smoking” would fall victim to a rule of English grammar which states that more often than not, the next noun (or nominative) after the transitive verb is its object (barring formations which require indirect objects, but that’s a whole other lesson :)). In the ungrammatical formation, “you” is the next nominative after the verb and would therefore appear to be the object, leaving “not smoking” as a meaningless structure within the sentence.
What is being appreciated is not you but the fact that you are not smoking.
Simplify it a little bit by replacing the nominative “not smoking” with the nominative “kindness” and I think you’ll see immediately that “your” is the only grammatical option.
All that being said, “We appreciate your not smoking” is, IMHO, a tortured sentence. “Thank you for not smoking” is much more direct and says exactly the same thing.
I think what may be confusing to people who don’t get it is that they are in fact making “you” the object, as noted by KneadToKnow. Mentally, they’re interpreting (or recasting) the sentence as, “We appreciate you (in the act of) not smoking” where the underlined section, in its entirety, forms some kind of clause, and the parenthetical aside is unstated but understood. When expanded like that, it becomes clear that what is appreciated is the failure to smoke, not the person who’s doing it, and thus “your not smoking” becomes the obvious correct choice.
And yeah, KneadToKnow, I find in cases like this that it’s much easier to completely rewrite the sentence to express the same sentiment than it is to wrestle with the question of being correct but sounding stilted or being wrong but sounding (colloquially) correct.
I know this is more of a grammar question, but whenever I see some convoluted grammar, I always ask “Why not just say it another way?”
Please, no smoking.
Thank you for not smoking.
We would appreciate it if you didn’t smoke in this area. (they should have said it this way, but they probably didn’t because it’s too long, but longer is better if the other way is confusing)
When I was in Health Safety, we had a lot of discussions on how to word signs. Clear, concise, short won out every time.
Sometimes my small brain is just happy to know the rule and abid by it without feeling the need to understand it. This looks like one of those times. But I’m happy to know that there is a good reason for using “your” and that so many people understand what it is.
BTW - I also agree that when it seems weird the best approach is to write it some other way.
Anyways, it depends on what we appreciate – you or the not smoking. In this case we appreciate the not smoking that you are doing (or is it not doing).
Consider:
I watched you driving.
I watched your driving.
Both are correct. It depends on what I was watching – you or the driving.
In this last instance, though, “driving” is a different part of speech or is functioning differently at least. “I watched you driving” is ambiguous-- who was driving? Driving here is a participle (right?), a verb form, while in the other it is, as noted ad nauseum, a gerund. And I don’t think there is anything convoluted about “We appreciate your not smoking.”
