I’m very excited to be off to Savannah this coming weekend for my cousin’s wedding.  In preparation for my drive north, I had my oil changed last week.  A few minutes before I was to leave, I was working on some editing and came across this sentence:

“When he slid into the driver’s seat, he looked around the car’s interior.”

Word was giving me some pushback on my apostrophes in that sentence.  I searched online to see if there was a definite word on whether “Driver’s seat” should have an apostrophe or not.  I mean, it’s possessive … kinda of.

So I decided to take my sentence with me to my mechanic.  First of all, I’ll say that I don’t go to a run of the mill garage. I get my car serviced at a shop that mostly does fleet repairs that they have contracts to do, and only have a hand full of average car clients like myself.  I love them because they don’t take advantage of women.  On the contrary, they look out for us!  I have my own personal guy who looks at my car and I love the owner who runs the office.  So, I took my sentence to the professionals and asked if Driver’s and Car’s should have apostrophes.

According to my guy, a professional in the field, he says there’s no apostrophe in drivers seat or the drivers side of the car.  He’d think it would look odd if it had one.  Car’s he was less certain about, could go either way.

No, sadly this isn’t my mechanic.

So on the advice of my mechanic, I’ve removed the apostrophes from drivers and left it in car’s.  Is it odd to take writing advice from your mechanic?  Yeah, but it would be even stranger if he took car advice from me!!

-Jennifer

Jennifer Geoghan, author of The Purity of Blood novel series and If Love is a Lie: A Partly True Love Story.

I’d love to hear from you! So click on “Leave A Comment” below and let me know what’s on your mind.