Discussion Groups / British English / January 2005

Both are grammatically correct.  Book of Job is the proper
name of one of the books of the Old Testament, thus not
obliged to follow general rules of language (if there are
any.)

All these forms are grammatically correct.  Differences
are merely attributable to local custom, not grammar.
(One of the reason ESL is difficult is that English is
one of those languages with several different correct
ways of saying the same thing.)

The word "of" can denote possession, and an apostrope can denote possession,
but you must choose only one for one act of possession.

The examples you give are all a little different.

If you are talking about the Book of Job in the Bible, for example, it is
common to describe it as "the book of Job". A Bible Study leader might say,
for example, "turn to the Book of Job, or the Book of Acts, etc, etc." This
usage is usual because some of the books of the Bible carry the name of the
author while others do not, so a usage continues that can be applied for all
of them.

If you bought a new book by Joe Citizen, you would say, "I bought Joe
Citizen's new book."

Only "a reader of Shakespeare". Here Shakespeare is a subject being studied.
But you could say, "I am a reader of Shakespeare's work" and then you would
show that the work you are reading "belongs to" or came from Shakespeare.

Either "a friend of John" or "John's friend."  I am a friend of John. I am
John's friend. But you might hear people say "a friend of John's" because
that sort of thing happens in speech, but it is not correct. :-)

Either "a follower of Mussolini" or "a follower of Mussolini's ideas". Here
the apostrophe in Mussolini indicates something possessed by Mussolini.

They have different meanings.  The second would have to mean the
book Job owned, not the book that was written about him.

Again, different meanings.  The second would have to mean a reader
that Shakespeare employed.

These two are synomymous.

Almost synonymous.  For me, the second would tend to imply that the
follower was contemporaneous with Mussolini; it implies a sort of
personal link, while the first would apply to someone who followed
Mussolini's ideology in the abstract.

The reason they don't quite fit is that they are imitations of French
syntax - no other Germanic language goes in for them to the same
extent.  They were first made really popular by the King James Bible.

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"Of" has more than one meaning. "The book of Job" is not possessive: it
means "the book about Job" or "the book entitled 'Job' ", not "the book by
Job" or  "the book belonging to Job". The form "book of Job" is very old and
traditional, going back to Latin, and would not usually be suitable for
anything but references to the Bible. However, I can imagine saying "in the
play of Hamlet" if I wanted to make it clear that I meant the complete play
and not the character. In any case, it can't be "Job's " or "Hamlet's",
because the "of" is not in any sense possessive.

The other examples depend on usage rather than meaning. To me (British
English) "a friend of John" sounds very odd; the natural form is "a friend
of John's", on the model of "one of John's friends" Yet I prefer "a reader
of Shakespeare" and "a follower of Mussolini", perhaps because the persons
are not really thought of as individual people in those expressions:
"Shakespeare" there means "the plays by Shakespeare", "Mussolini" means "the
theories and policies associated with Mussolini".

I assume that all languages have idiomatic usages not accounted for by
logic. They just have to be accepted and imitated; analysis doesn't always
help. Fortunately English is fairly flexible: if you say "a friend of John"
you will be correctly understood in Britain even if you sound very slightly
non-native.

Alan Jones