Grammar folk, put the apostrophe in the correct place in the following sentance:

[Northerner]

If you combined every member of the teams yearly experience

Where would it go in the word teams? BIG debate here in office chez northerner.

Ta very muchly.

If there is only one team - then it is team's.

But it would be more elegant to say:"...if you combined every team member's yearly experience"

where's hunker?

sorry dino!..dint mean to sya you were'nt good enough!

I'm with dinosaure. On both her points. Not clear how else you could punctuate it.

If you combined the yearly experience of every member of the team.

More elegant and no apostrophe's (joke!)

Ooh I like that JanH!

I would delete 'of the team', and add an apostrophe and S to the end of member.

Now I'm just bothered by "yearly experience". It's a strange phrase.

I'd be inclined to say something like "The team have a combined experience of X years."

Why thank you, ma'am.

(I am a sad little pedant who spends many happy minutes rephrasing things for fun!)

Ohhhh, I thought it meant one year for every member (behave, MI!)

Well, you'd have a field day in my office, a treasure trove of clunky prose (not written by me, I hasten to add).

I wouldn't use 'yearly', because that means 'each year'. I would say, 'if you combined all team members' years of experience', or 'if you combined the years of experience represented by each member of the team'

I wondered about that, OldieMum, but as northerner hadn't asked that question, I didn't answer it...bit of a work to rule type, me.

Notquitecockney's is better, though.

How about introducing a nice clunky member-years (as in man-days in maths exercises)?

The team has a combined experience of X years, NQC. It's a collective noun. Rant. Rave. Froth.

I like the idea of member-years.

Well, if you're trying to emphasize the members of the team, mi, you can use have. But yeah, has is better.

I am quite sure the members are adequate without further emphasis, dearie.

Fnar fnar.

:-P

Must go back to having grammar debates about whether "I ain't got no McDonalds is valid" ... much easier to bait people in those ...

teams' or team's (?) and sentence btw!

It couldn't be teams', as dinosaure says, there is only one team.

Oh okay I missed the bit that clarified whether it was teams plural!

what happens if you do combine said experience? just wondering. Also it might effect the feasibility of NCQ's otherwise perfect solution. Although it is very feasible it can broken into 2 sentences. (why have one when you can chop them into two?). The team has a combined experience of x years. This is .../represents...