Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and two subsequent best-selling books, died in 2004. But those three books were so popular that another author,  David Lagercrantz, has stepped up to give us another exciting tale about Lisbeth Salander: The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Several of my friends have already read it.

Lois Smith, a writer friend, recently made a good point about the wording of the title: Spider’s Web, she says, is a better choice than Spider Web.

Technically it’s the difference between a possessive noun (spider’s) and an attributive noun (spider). Here are two more examples:

dog’s collar (possessive)

dog collar (attributive)

Linguistic experts who keep track of language trends are noticing that attributive nouns are replacing possessives more and more often. It’s not hard to see why: Speech is easier when we skip that apostrophe + s.

But sometimes that apostrophe + s is useful. Lois pointed out that spider’s web makes the spider “much more ‘possessive,’ more dangerous to the poor girl entangled within its steely filaments, than the plain spider web.” She added that spider web “just doesn’t have the same creepy feel. Funny, the big difference in my mind when the possessive is added.”

She’s right – and her comments point to an important principle: Our brains are hyper-sensitive to language. Small changes can make a big difference.

Here’s an example from Naked, Drunk, and Writing by Lara Adair:

“The airport’s over there,” he said, pointing out the window. WEAK

It’s a perfectly grammatical sentence – but it’s much improved if you break it into two sentences so that we can see him pointing:

He pointed out the window. “The airport’s over there.” STRONGER

I find this example especially intriguing because it defies conventional wisdom that writers need long, sophisticated sentences. (How many of us had essays returned to us with “choppy” written in red ink in the margins?) The truth is that sometimes a short, punchy sentence works better.

How to tell? The best route is to do a lot of experimenting and revising.