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What is the possessive of a noun ending in ‑s? Are these both right, or is the second one wrong?

  1. the boys' books

  2. the boss' car

tchrist
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apaderno
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3 Answers3

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Your example sentences confuse two different problems.

For nouns that are plural (such as "boys"), the possessive is formed in writing by adding an apostrophe after the plural -s. This is pronounced the same as the plural and the singular possessive:

The boys' books [boys' sounds like boys]

For singular nouns that end in -s, the possessive is formed by adding -'s, just as with other nouns. This is pronounced as if the spelling were es:

The boss's car [boss's sounds like bosses]

There is a partial exception for proper names that end in s. These names sometimes form their possessive by simply adding an apostrophe, and without changing their pronunciation:

Confucius' sayings

Jesus' teachings

However, this doesn't apply if the name ends with a letter other than s, even if it's pronounced with an s. These names form their possessive as normal:

Marx's theories

In the opposite case of a name which ends in a silent s, the possessive is usually formed by adding an apostrophe in writing, but the apostrophe causes the silent s to be pronounced:

Camus' novels [the final -s in Camus is not silent here]

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JSBձոգչ
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    +1, I hadn't thought about the implications of the proper name exception when used with a silent final s. – cori Aug 16 '10 at 22:08
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    +1, but I'll note that there exist style guides which follow the following simplistic rule: if a singular noun ends with an s, just add “'s”, regardless of whether it's a proper noun or how it's pronounced. I like the simplicity of this rule. – ShreevatsaR Aug 16 '10 at 22:32
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    Do you have a source on this with proper names not needing an extra s? I am fairly certain it should still be Confucius's sayings, Jesus's teachings, and Camus's novels, with the first s still silent in the last case. – StrixVaria Aug 19 '10 at 16:13
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    @StrixVaria: Absolutely. Many speakers would (albeit with misgivings, before and/or after vocalisation) enunciate the third s for Jesus's possessions. I venture to suggest virtually no-one would try that with mistresses's... http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/22978/how-do-i-pronounce-ss-and-s/22987#22987 – FumbleFingers May 02 '11 at 21:55
  • There are special cases for biblical and classical names , so it's "Dickens' writings" but Jesus' and Moses' or Achilles' – mgb May 25 '11 at 20:21
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    @FumbleFingers But "mistresses" is already plural and wouldn't get the extra s after the apostrophe anyway. – StrixVaria May 26 '11 at 01:23
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    @StrixVaria: Yes. I didn't register that when I wrote it, but you're right. I think we never enunciate the possessive s on plurals made by adding s. It's just the Jesus's one that might or might not. I'm not a preacher so I wouldn't talk much about him anyway. But if I did, I'd probably stop saying the s there fairly soon. – FumbleFingers May 26 '11 at 02:09
  • @JSBangs: re partial exception for proper names that end in -s, it seems to me the only cases where this applies is if there's a preceding 's' or similar before the last one. And I think there's uncertainty over whether the possessive is enunciated or not, which has no connection with whether it's written or not. And this NGram shows it is written sometimes... http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Jesus%27s%2CJesus%27&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 – FumbleFingers May 26 '11 at 02:20
  • In light of which, note that in the case of Camus' the possessive s is written as often as not. It may be an irrelevancy of perspective, but I suggest it's not that the apostrophe causes the silent s to be pronounced. That one remains silent. It's the possessive s that always gets enunciated by people saying Camus', even if reading aloud from a text that happens not to include it in written form. – FumbleFingers May 26 '11 at 02:31
  • @FumbleFingers: it's tricky. I would definitely add an "s", when speaking, to any word that doesn't already sound like it's a plural (so Jesus's, Chaz's, etc. -- Chaz because English words can't end with /æ/). But I would not add an "s" to Achilles, which already sounds like an English plural (and since nobody talks about Achilles's heel, I think this is fairly common). And I don't think anybody says Moses's. On the other hand, Rose sounds like the English plural rows, and I would definitely say Rose's. But I would probably also say Loews', and Loews rhymes with Rose. – Peter Shor May 29 '11 at 17:05
  • @Peter Shor: very interesting examples. I think Jesus's is a cusp point, and may or may not get the possessive enunciated. All others I'm 100% same as you except maybe Loews' where I'm unsure (but so are you lol). But I think maybe others differ, and maybe neither we personally, not any gramarian, can lay down the law about exactly when you shouldn't sound that extra 's'. The most interesting thing to me so far is that enunciation isn't necessarily dictated by orthography - in some cases you can say or nor, and write or not. – FumbleFingers May 30 '11 at 00:00
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    Do you have any authoritative references? I'm not asking because I don't believe you. I'm asking because when the question comes up I can't say "because some guy on the internet said so", not even if said guy got 60 upvotes. – Szabolcs Feb 26 '15 at 18:08
  • This is an answer worthy of being canonical for questions about possessives. I second @Szabolcs'(s) comment and request, particularly for the case involving the boss's car. – Lawrence Mar 27 '16 at 12:33
  • Too many exceptions to the rule. English is broken. – ahnbizcad Aug 04 '17 at 22:07
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    @FumbleFingers what about Descartes /deɪˈkɑːrt/ ? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/ – GJC Jul 23 '20 at 13:28
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    @GJC: Personally I'd write *Descartes’s name* rather than *Descartes’ name* (both occur, as that NGram link shows) But we're a long way from the "real English language" by then, since I consider all language to be essentially spoken rather than written. On top of which *Descartes* is a French proper noun with a phonologically irrelevant trailing /s/ - it's not even English in the first place (as with JSBձոգչ's Camus above). – FumbleFingers Jul 23 '20 at 16:53
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    @FumbleFingers According to LPD, "With proper names ending in a sibilant, usage varies. Usually, the possessive is pronounced regularly, though the spelling may vary: Jones’ , Jones’s dʒoʊnzəz. Less commonly, the possessive ending is unpronounced (dʒoʊnz), but the corresponding spelling is then Jones’ " – GJC Jul 23 '20 at 17:01
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    @GJC: If LPD (Longman's Pronunciation Dictionary?) are implying there's a strong connection between whether the final possessive *s* is articulated and whether it's transcribed or not, I think that's misleading. I don't think the orthography itself makes a blind bit of difference to whether people articulate one or two *s's* in something like Saint James's / James'* Park*. Some people pronounce it and some don't, just as some write it and some don't. But at the end of the day there's only one "language", for which both orthographies are just "approximations". – FumbleFingers Jul 23 '20 at 18:39
  • (Mind you, Saint Jamesiz* Park* notwithstanding, I can say with some conviction that I've never heard - and never expect to hear - any references to Davey Jonesiz* Locker*.) – FumbleFingers Jul 23 '20 at 18:46
  • @FumbleFingers what about your guys'(s)? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_guys#Usage_notes – GJC Jul 26 '20 at 17:00
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    Spotted in a NYT daily news briefing: "But Biden’s policy stops short of minimizing the virus’s spread." – Luke Hutchison Jan 26 '21 at 14:45
  • What about the possessive form of "chassis"? It's not a proper noun, but it does end in a silent "s". On its own I pronounce it "shassy". In possessive form, is it then "chassis's" (as in "the chassis's connected peripherals"), and pronounced "shassy's"? The rules in the answer don't appear to extend to cover (a) non-proper nouns ending in silent "s" and (b) foreign borrow-words (i.e. do we borrow the possessive form from the target language as well, or apply English's rules?). – Sean Oct 21 '21 at 07:16
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On singular nouns that end with an "s" or "z" sound, Wikipedia has a say. According to the article, there is no hard and fast rule on this one and different "authorities" prefer different styles.

See also St. James's park and St. James' park.

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On the use of so-called 'zero genitive', marked by a simple apostrophe in spelling ('), and the 's possessive with nouns ending with an s, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik specify in A Comprehensive grammar of the English Language (pp. 320 & 321) that:

In addition to its normal use with regular plurals such as boys', the 'zero genitive' is used to avoid repetitive or awkward combinations of sounds in the following cases:

(i) with Greek names of more than one syllable that end in -s, as in:

Euripides' /di:z/ plays, Xerxes' army, Socrates' wife

(ii) with many other names ending in /z/, where in speech zero is a variant of the regular /ɪz/ genitive. There is vacillation both in the pronunciation and in the spelling of these names, but most commonly the pronunciation is /ɪz/, and the spelling is an apostrophe only. (In the following examples, the minority form is given in parentheses.)

WRITTEN FORMS

Burns' (Burns's) poem

Dickens' (Dickens's) novels

Jones' (Jones's) car

SPOKEN FORMS

/ˈbɜ:nzɪz (bɜ:nz)/

/ˈdɪkɪnzɪz (ˈdɪkɪnz)/

/ˈdʒəunzɪz (dʒəunz)/

Names ending in other sibilants than /z/ have the regular /ɪz/ genitive: Ross's /ˈrɒsɪz/ theories. However, Jesus and Moses normally have the zero form of the spoken genitive, /ˈdʒi:zəs/ and /ˈməuzɪz/, and are written Jesus' and Moses' (as well as Jesus's and Moses's).

(iii) with fixed expression of the form for . . . sake, as in for goddness' sake, for conscience' sake, where the noun ends in /s/.

Boss ends in a sibilant, /s/, other than /z/, and becomes boss's in the possessive. So we have the boss's car.

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grandtout
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  • What corpora did Quirk et al use? These Google Ngrams seem to strongly suggest that Burns' is the minority form. If I'm reading them correctly. / tchrist has answered elsewhere that 's and the /ɪz/ pronunciation are almost always twinned. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 28 '19 at 15:54
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    @EdwinAshworth The list of abbreviations and symbols has SEU which stands for Survey of English Usage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_of_English_Usage) founded by Quirk himself in the late fifties at UCL. I agree that the 's forms form Burns, Dickens, Wells and similar names feel intuitively more widespread. Perhaps Quirk et al.'s remark is more prescriptive than descriptive. – grandtout Nov 28 '19 at 18:38
  • Hmm, he's/they're usually pretty good. // I came across something giving a rule-of-thumb ('Truss', I think) that usages 'concerning antiquities' tended not to add the second s while more modern examples did (or vice versa). I wondered if this licensed Athens' glory days were millenia ago; Athens's more recent history may not be so well known. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 28 '19 at 19:14
  • @EdwinAshworth According to Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, "With proper names ending in a sibilant, usage varies. Usually, the possessive is pronounced regularly, though the spelling may vary: Jones’ , Jones’s dʒoʊnzəz. Less commonly, the possessive ending is unpronounced (dʒoʊnz), but the corresponding spelling is then Jones’ " – GJC Jul 23 '20 at 17:02
  • @GJC Do they mention what research they've carried out? Certainly ACGEL (1985) must be out of date on this now. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 23 '20 at 18:13
  • @EdwinAshworth what about your guys'(s)? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_guys#Usage_notes – GJC Jul 26 '20 at 17:00
  • @GJC Non-standard². – Edwin Ashworth Jul 27 '20 at 15:06