Q. I somewhat often find myself struggling to find a grammatical construct for adding information about a possessive, particularly where the additional information is nonsubstantive enough that I don’t want to dedicate an entire sentence to presenting it. An example is: “The school’s, which is across the street, bell rings at three o’clock.” I expect that the answer is to change my phrasing. If anyone can guide me out of this desperate quandary, I’m quite certain that it’s my heroes at the CMOS.
A. Natch, with one hand tied behind my back: e.g., The bell rings at three at the school across the street. When a possessive gets ugly, give it up.