got all A's when she was in high school=

[navi tasan]

1) She found out that men were not comfortable working for her, so she hired all women.
2) She was a good student and got all A's when she was in high school.
3) He told me I could buy CD's or books with the money he had given me. I bought all books with that money.
4) He told me I could buy CD's or books with the money he had given me. I bought all books.

Which of the above sentences are correct?

 

[emsr2d2]

Only sentence #1 is correct. The other three all contain incorrect apostrophes.

 

[jutfrank]

You keep asking about which sentences are "correct" and I rarely know for sure what you mean by this.

With this particular question, I think you're probably asking something about logic rather than how the sentences are transcribed or how completely or how well expressed the thoughts are. With that in mind:

Yes, all sentences are logical, but let's immediately eliminate your sentence #3 since it is logically identical to #4, and the explicit prepositional phrase with that money changes nothing. The logic of all three sentences, which could be described as universal quantification within a defined set, is as follows:

she hired all women = every member of the set of people she hired was a woman
she got all A's = every member of the set of grades she got was an A
she bought all books = every member of the set of things she bought was a book

Does that come close to answering what you really want to ask or not?

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you both very much,

Jutfrank, I think you did answer my question. You are correct that in a sense this is a logic question. I think those sentences sound a bit strange to me because 'all' isn't used that way in my native languages. I was almost sure that the sentences worked in spoken English, but I wondered if they would be correct in formal English. To me they do sound a bit 'illogical', but that, as I said, is due to the fact that in my languages 'all' isn't used that way.

Thank you very much for all your replies!

Emsr2d2, maybe the way apostrophes are used in these cases is different in American English and in British English. I am not sure, but I'd imagine that my sentences would be correct in American English... Not sure....

Thanks.

 

[emsr2d2]

Emsr2d2, maybe the way apostrophes are used in these cases is different in American English and in British English. I am not sure, but I'd imagine that my sentences would be correct in American English. I'm not sure.

See above. Please don't use strings of dots instead of a full stop. An ellipsis (space then three dots then another space) has a specific use. Your second "I'm not sure" was tautologous because you started the previous sentence with "I am not sure". You haven't added a second thing you're not sure about.

You might be right about AmE. I'll wait for an AmE speaker to confirm but I did find a page from Southern Utah University that gives "She got A's on her biology quizzes" as an example of pluralising individual letters or characters.
To be fair, BrE style might have changed in the forty-odd years since I was learning English at school but I maintain that I'd write either:
She got an A in her Biology, Chemistry and Maths exams.
or
She got As in her Biology, Chemistry and Maths exams.

 

[jutfrank]

She got As in her Biology, Chemistry and Maths exams.

I equally dislike the use of apostrophes to make plurals too and certainly wouldn't include one in CDs, but don't you agree that She got straight As in her exams is a bit distracting, since 'as' is a word? If the guiding principle is clarity for the sake of the reader, the apostrophe does good work in this case.

 

[emsr2d2]

I equally dislike the use of apostrophes to make plurals too and certainly wouldn't include one in CDs, but don't you agree that She got straight As in her exams is a bit distracting, since 'as' is a word? If the guiding principle is clarity for the sake of the reader, the apostrophe does good work in this case.

I can see how it could be misleading. That's why I'd opt for "She got an A in all her exams".

 

[Tarheel]

I would probably use "only" instead of "all" in those sentences.

She only hired women.
He only bought books.

 

[emsr2d2]

I would probably use "only" instead of "all" in those sentences.

She only hired women.
He only bought books.

Both of those would be heard from native speakers but there's an issue with the position of "only". Putting it in front of the verb suggests that she might not have done something else with the women or books. For example:
She only hired women. She never fired or disciplined them.
He only bought books. He never stole them, nor did he borrow them from libraries.

To avoid all confusion, use "She hired only women" and "He bought only books".

 

[Tarheel]

Yes. However, there is unlikely to be any confusion about the meaning of the sentence in real life. Context would make the meaning clear.