Apostrophe- please help!

Question

I want to say the sentence "We want to positively expand China and EU member countries’ citizens exchange and cooperation." Can I say EU member countries' citizens? (they are the citizens of the EU member countries, I am just unsure about the apostrophe!!)

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

The thing is too long and complicated, Guest. You won't get tangled in punctuation and grammar so much if you SIMPLIFY and CLARIFY. The following revision says everything that your original does, and much more clearly:

'We want to expand China and EU citizen exchange and cooperation.'

MountainHiker · Answer

Hi all,

This might seem a bit silly, but you do you want to "exchange citizens" (increase worker mobility) or increase the dialog (exchange) between citizens?

I trust it is dialog, though I am not certain.

Following on Mister Micawber's suggestion:

We want to (greatly/significantly) increase the dialog and cooperation between the citizens of China and of EU.

(Not sure if the second "of" should be there. I want to be sure it is citizens of China and citizens of EU without having to write everything out....Mister Micawber, your thoughts? Also, you could use "communication" instead of "dialog" if that word seems better.)

MountainHiker

Mister Micawber · Answer

Actually, I did think-- without thinking-- that they wanted to exchange citizens (homestay, you know) but I see that is unlikely. Ah, the pleasures of ambiguity. I will revise my revision to:

'We want to expand Chinese and EU citizen dialogue and cooperation.'

Or I will happily accept yours, MH. I don't think you need the second 'of', but maybe a 'the' before 'EU' used as the noun.

Apostrophe- please help!

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