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If the cricket ground Lord's is a possessive, what if you want to describe something belonging to Lord's?

Here's a tricky one that I can't quite figure out the correct punctuation for. How do you write the possessive of a noun which is already possessive? The example which spawned this question:

How would you describe something belonging to St. John's, where St. John's is any of the colleges, towns or hospitals which bear this name, including the apostrophe, and not the saint?

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@waiwai933: This is what I've always done, I just wondered if there was any clever punctuation you could use to avoid this kind of rephrasing. I'm guessing from your immediate reply that the answer is probably no, but I'll see if anyone else comes up with something interesting.

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dataduck
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1 Answers1

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Avoid ambiguity and use the full name if possible.

St. John's College's admissions office

St. John's Hospital's triage area

If not, rephrase.

The schoolhouse of St. John's, Redhill

@waiwai933: This is what I've always done, I just wondered if there was any clever punctuation you could use to avoid this kind of rephrasing. I'm guessing from your immediate reply that the answer is probably no, but I'll see if anyone else comes up with something interesting.

That's correct. There's no real way around it, unless you've referred to it already, in which case you could step around mentioning the name altogether:

Its new surgical ward has just opened.

waiwai933
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  • I agree; I have never seen St. John's's (or St. John's') being used. – apaderno Feb 14 '11 at 01:38
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    Eh… this seems like answering “James’ or James’s?” by “Neither, you should always use his surname!” If there’s a St John’s College (Hospital, etc.) that you and your friends talk about frequently, then there’s no way you’ll end up naming it in full every time in speech, and no good reason to do so in writing. Also, one could be talking about eg the city of St. John’s, in Newfoundland, where there’s no noun to evade the question with… – PLL Feb 14 '11 at 03:30
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    @PLL The fact is, there is no other way to do this. And we're only addressing the possessive case here—it's fine to say "St John's just opened a new ward", but not "St. John's'(s) new ward". Assuming you've already referred to it, you could say "its new ward". And as to the city case, the name of a city is a proper noun. – waiwai933 Feb 14 '11 at 03:35
  • @waiwai933 -- it's too bad we don't sat "St. John's's". Then we could say, "St. John's's new ward's walls are painted blue, but St. James's's's are white." (Exercise for the reader: a plausible sentence with four 's-es.) – Michael Lorton Mar 23 '15 at 19:32