One's Own

[prism]

The alumni rag from my old skool, St Custard’s, arrived today, and I was delighted to see that it contained PEDANTRY, hem hem. In it, an old pupil explains that “one’s”, as in “A Room of One’s Own” is in fact wrong, and “one” should be treated treated like “it”, and hence have no apostrophe. So it should be “A Room of Ones Own”.

I’m not sure I agree, as while “one’s” could be an abbreviation for “one is” (as with “it’s”), “ones” could be a plural- whereas “its” can’t (unless you’re saying something very unusual about the wording of a sentence).

Wot does the panel think?

I would compare it with

"Fred's own room"
"A room of Fred's own"
and
"A room of his own"
"In a class of its own"

"One" is I suppose not a proper name.

I think I agree with your school. If you're using "one" as a possessive, in the same was as his/her/its then it would be "ones" own.

The only time it could be "one's" would be if "one's not amused" or similar.

Generally, nouns take apostrophes and pronouns don't (Cousin It's hair v its shiny nose).

It comes down to whether you think "one" is a pronoun or not, I suppose. And I don't think it is a pronoun, so I use an apostrophe.

Hmm.

I checked elsewhere on the web, and although there is a small body of opinion supporting St. Custard's, Fowler says. One's or, more rarely, his .

I'm with Fowler.

St. Custard's, nil, Fowler, Virginia Woolf and you, 1.

Or rather, the other alumn(us/a) of St. C's nil, the rest one.