Possessive form of "which"

[Mikoangelo]

What is the possessive form of "which?"

For example, if I want to ask a friend to send an email with a certain subject, how would I phrase this correctly:

Please send an email <word> subject is "Hello".

Most places I see it "whose" is used.

[DanielScocco]

I might be wrong, but I think that whose is reserved for people. Check this link.

http://www.edufind.com/English/Grammar/Determiners15.cfm

Anyway further research is needed, I will update you.

[--Deb]

Hmm. I agree that "whose" is should belong to a person, but I don't think that "which" can be used as a possessive at all. It can identify one thing as opposed to another, but so far as I know, it cannot be (or have) possessive of anything. To show possession, you'd need an apostrophe-S, which is just ridiculous (which's?).

You could say, "Please send an email WHICH HAS a subject, "Hello," but if you desperately wanted to show possession, (the chair whose leg is broken) I'd say that "whose" is a better choice than which--because at least it IS a possessive.

[neelcm]

I think you can write this sentence as
"Please send an email for which subject is "Hello"
"Please send an email stating the subject line as "Hello"
"Please send an email with subject as "Hello"

May be I am wrong. This is one way you can convey this message.

Here, using "Whose" will also be correct.

[DanielScocco]

Yeah perhaps you would need to change the sentence around to be able to insert a which there.

And I would do that rather than using whose.

[Maeve]

Deb and Neelcm are on the mark here. When the alternatives are clumsy and unidiomatic, it's better to break a so-called "rule."

Using whose with an inanimate antecedent falls into the same category as that of using a preposition at the end of a sentence.

Making a fetish of avoiding whose when the antecedent is inanimate can only lead to clumsy, ugly writing.

Please send an email whose subject is "Hello."

Nothing wrong with this sentence.

H.W.Fowler defends the use of what he calls "whose inanimate." He concludes his article on it by saying:

"...good writing is surely difficult enough without the forbidding of things that have historical grammar, and present intelligibility, and obvious convenience, on their side..."

[Mikoangelo]

Great! Thank you all for your help.

I'll use “whose” from now on if I can't get around it smoothly.

Thanks. :D