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Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Grammar

Plural or Singular?

Usually people will say, "Check your car's tire pressure regularly." Someone suggested that saying, "Check your tires' pressures," was also proper English.

In my opinion, using the plural form of tires and pressure is very clumsy, not to mention that sentence construction with genitive case is in this case also rather gauche.

Please advise.
  

Top answer

Even though a car is inanimate, many people use the possessive on it in such examples, but normally, you would see or hear something like this: Be sure to close your car door. " That aside, to the issue of the tire, it should be singular because it is in the adjective position, and adjectives usually are not plural in English. "

— Englishmaven

  • Even though a car is inanimate, many people use the possessive on it in such examples, but normally, you would see or hear something like this: Be sure to close your car door.
  • " That aside, to the issue of the tire, it should be singular because it is in the adjective position, and adjectives usually are not plural in English.
  • "
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3 Answers
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Even though a car is inanimate, many people use the possessive on it in such examples, but normally, you would see or hear something like this:

Be sure to close your car door.

You wouldn't say, "Be sure to close your car's door."

That aside, to the issue of the tire, it should be singular because it is in the adjective position, and adjectives usually are not plural in
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Thanks you for your reply. That's a good point on on the adjective position!
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As far as the tires go, I would say " check the tire pressure of you car regularly."
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