CONTENTS FEATURE: Should you send "season's greetings" or "seasons greetings"? GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding your questions FINDER'S FEE: Recommend a friend—and earn up to $500 FEATURE: Should you send "season's greetings" or "seasons greetings"?      The arrival of November is a sobering reminder that you need to solidify your holiday dinner and party plans, get cracking on your gift shopping, and start thinking about your home and office greeting card lists. As you get down to the business of preparing your cards, you may be stumped by a recurring December dilemma: should you write "season's greetings" or "seasons' greetings"? Or "seasons greetings," with no apostrophe at all?      That's what reader Philip J. asked. In the holiday spirit, we're pleased to offer our view.      The expression "season's greetings" is an example of "genitive case" — also known as possessive — in which one noun is the "possessor" of another noun.      Genitive case can be used to express an attribute. For example, a reference to "Sophia's arrival" does not indicate that she "possesses" an arrival; "arrival" names an action that Sophia is taking. That's a particular kind of genitive case that grammarians call "subjective genitive." The word in the genitive case ("Sophia's") performs an action that the "possessed" word names (Sophia ARRIVES). The subject is Sophia's ARRIVAL.      In contrast, a construction called "objective genitive" is composed of a genitive that modifies a noun that performs an inferred action upon the genitive modifier: The Columbia Guide to Standard American English offers "your father's illness" (the illness acted upon your father) and "his tormentors" (referring to people who tormented him).      Although a retail shop may be described as a "men's clothing store," the people who own it may be women; here again, the use of the possessive case indicates an attribute rather than property ownership — the store sells clothing made FOR men. Grammarians classify that construction as "genitive of purpose," to indicate how the modified noun is used.      The "garage's roof" is not owned by the garage; the possessive is used in that sense to indicate a constituent part or to identify WHICH roof. That is a "descriptive genitive" construction, as is the expression "a month's notice" in the statement that "he gave his landlord a month's notice before moving." The notice does not "belong" to the month; the genitive ("a month") describes the length of the notice. The "Hundred Years' War" is another descriptive genitive. The war was not the property of the hundred years; it TOOK PLACE over a period that lasted 100 years. Similarly, the expression "a dollar's worth" is not possessive in the sense of ownership. If Lou tells a hardware store clerk that he would like a dollar's worth of nails, he is asking for a quantity of nails that have a combined worth of a dollar. The nails have or "possess" the worth.      Billy can talk about "his grades" in school, but he doesn't own them; that's a "genitive of origin" construction. Likewise, Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is not about a dream that a night had. A person can dream, but a night cannot. The dream originated or occurred DURING a midsummer night.      The phrase "season's greetings" can be considered a descriptive genitive or an objective genitive. When Belinda says "season's greetings," the greetings are hers; they do not belong to the season. She is SENDING greetings FOR the season or greeting people IN THE SPIRIT OF the season. But she is speaking of only one season; offering "seasons' greetings" would indicate that she is referring to two or more seasons, which presumably is not Belinda's intention.      So at the end of this year you can confidently offer relatives and friends "greetings for the season" — or "season's greetings."      You might also wish someone a "happy new year," but don't say "happy new years" (plural) unless you're referring to more than one year at a time (the holiday is named in possessive form: New Year's Day). Lincoln's Birthday, Saint Valentine's Day, Washington's Birthday, St. Patrick's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day are likewise expressed in singular possessive form. The November holiday that honors military personnel is Veterans Day (not "Veteran's Day" or "Veterans' Day"). Opinion is divided, however, about the February holiday that honors presidents. The Associated Press Stylebook and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual say its "Presidents Day" (plural, not possessive). Webster's New World College Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Online and the American Heritage Dictionary all say it's "Presidents' Day" (plural possessive).      For now, though, you have a mountain of holiday cards to sign and send. If you're still hesitant about writing "season's greetings" because people don't really SAY that to one another, you can always honor specific traditions instead. Wish a "merry Christmas" to Christians, "happy Hanukkah" (or Chanukah) to people of the Jewish faith, "happy Kwanzaa" or "joyous Kwanzaa" to African-American friends, and "eid mubarak" to Muslims.      Shayma H., a Muslim woman who lives in the United States, reassures that "eid mubarak" is appropriate and is never offensive to a follower of Islam, regardless of the faith of the greeter.      "'Eid mubarak' literally means "blessed festivities," Shayma said. Although the word "eid" means "festivities" or "celebrations," it is most often used among Muslims in reference to two specific holidays — Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month-long Ramadan fasting period, and Eid al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for God's sake. "Eids" occur according to the Islamic lunar calendar, in which the demarcation of the beginning of months is dependent upon the visibility of the new crescent moon. Consequently, "eids" don't coincide with a consistent date on the Gregorian calendar of the Western world. This year, Eid al-Adha likely will occur around Dec. 6.      "For non-Muslim Arabs, the word 'eid' is used for any holiday. So Christmas is the 'eid' of the birth of Jesus, and Easter is the 'eid' of his rising from death," Shayma said. "I personally don't mind 'Merry Christmas' at all because it is the longest vacation of the year, and the whole country is decorated. Why shouldn't it be 'merry' whether I celebrate it or not?      "But I do understand that some people prefer not to be greeted this way, including some agnostic or atheistic American friends of mine. If you are looking for a greeting that will be totally safe for Christmas time, 'happy holidays' really works for everyone and is more inclusive," Shayma advised.      We at EditPros also endorse "happy holidays" because most people actually do celebrate more than one holiday this time of year — an ethnic or religious holiday in addition to the advent of the new calendar year. Whichever greeting you choose, find a comfortable pen, limber your wrist, and get started. The holidays are just about here. GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding your questions 1. Bimla wrote:      "In the sentences 'I am a girl' and 'Mumbai is a city,' what part of speech will 'girl' and 'city' be identified as? I am confused [whether] we call them nouns, as they are naming something, or adjectives, as they are describing a noun." The grammar coach replies:      In your example sentences "I am a girl" and "Mumbai is a city," the words "girl" and "city" are nouns, as you correctly noted. Within these sentences, each of these words remains a noun as a part of speech, but each FUNCTIONS within the sentence as a COMPLEMENT of the subject.      A subject complement is a component of a predicate that restates or describes the subject. In both sentences, the verb is an inflected form of the intransitive verb "be" ("am" is the first-person singular present tense, and "is" we know as third-person singular present tense).      A subject complement can take the form of either a predicate noun (such as "girl" in your example) or a predicate adjective (such as "happy" as in "I am happy").      In these sentences, nothing changes the part of speech of the words "girl" and "city"; both remain nouns. But they FUNCTION as subject complements. 2. Susan D. wrote:      "Do you use a comma before the word 'thereby'?" The grammar coach replies:      The adverb "thereby" — which means "in that way," "by that means" or "connected with that" — does not necessarily require a comma to precede it. The need for a comma is determined by the construction of the sentence and the role that "thereby" plays in the sentence.      No comma is required in this usage: "Dennis took the old two-lane highway along the north shore of the bay. He thereby avoided the traffic snarl created by an accident on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge."      A comma is optional in this sentence: "Dennis drove Marie's car rather than his pickup truck and he thereby saved several gallons of gasoline." (A comma can be inserted before the conjunction "and," but is not required.)      The comma is unnecessary because the adverb "thereby" is a component of an independent clause ("he thereby saved several gallons of gasoline"). That's not the case if "thereby" forms part of a participial phrase.      A comma IS needed in this modified statement: "Dennis drove Marie's car rather than his pickup truck, thereby saving several gallons of gasoline." In that sentence, "thereby saving several gallons of gasoline" is a participial phrase; it cannot stand on its own. The comma is required to separate the independent clause from the participial phrase.      Are you perplexed by some aspect of grammar or word usage? Don't be shy! Ask the "grammar coach" at EditPros and we'll try to help—at no charge, just for the sport of it. FINDER'S FEE: Recommend a friend—and earn a finder's fee of up to $500      Do you know of a friend or colleague whose office can benefit from EditPros' services? 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