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Possible Duplicate:
What is the correct possessive for nouns ending in s?
When did it become correct to add an 's' to a singular possessive already ending in 's'?

I just bought The Elements of Style, an awesome little book. However, in the first section, the authors promote the use of 's, no matter what the last letter of a word is, to show possessiveness.

Some examples they use:

  • Charles's friend
  • Burns's poems

Are these grammatically correct?

Mari-Lou A
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nopcorn
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5 Answers5

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The rule is very simple, and it has no exceptions: that you add an s if you say the s, which is almost always.

That said, because we don’t say the extra s when speaking certain limited phrases like these following examples, they therefore necessarily take no added s in spelling:

  • that species’ name
  • this series’ final episode
  • your Achilles’ heel
  • Diogenes’ lamp
  • for goodness’ sake
  • for righteousness’ sake

(Explanation: If the word ends in unstressed /iːz/, it is invariant in the face of any /ɨz/ inflection, whether for plural or possessive forms. There are very few of these, very nearly all of which are proper nouns from Greek or sometimes Latin. The other case above is the formulaic “for ___ sake”, which has a fossilized omission in speech.)

Most speakers, however, do always say the /ɨz/ form for the possessive in all these, so they all do add a final s in writing, to show that we sake it in speech:

  • that genus’s sole representative species
  • Alice’s mom
  • in Jesus’s name, Amen. [Note: Some people don’t actually say the added /ɨz/ for this one, in which case those people alone omit the extra s here.]
  • the corpse’s decay
  • the corpus’s curator
  • the virus’s spread
  • James’s dad
  • the capital s’s shape
  • Gabriel García Márquez’s greatest work
  • the process’s run state
  • the kiss’s wetness
  • the lass’s appearance
  • my boss’s idea
  • the Blitz’s impact
  • jazz’s exotic harmonies
  • the topaz’s native color
  • Aunt Agnes’s new husband

It’s important to remember that the apostrophe represents no sound whatsoever, so if you say an extra sound, you have to use an extra letter. There is no exception to this rule; it’s not as though in certain words the apostrophe suddenly stands for the /ɨz/ sound. That’s the mistake people make. If you need the sound, then you need the letter, which is s.

tchrist
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  • The rule for pronunciation is a little more complicated that that ... lots of people don't add an extra 's' to last names (especially multi-syllabic ones) that already sound like they're plurals, so you get Adams', Roberts' or Richards'. – Peter Shor Mar 26 '12 at 14:26
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    @PeterShor How is it more complicated? I said if you say it, you write it. You have given no contradiction. – tchrist Mar 26 '12 at 14:30
  • I was talking about the rules you gave for pronunciation, not for spelling. – Peter Shor Mar 26 '12 at 14:31
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    @PeterShor I didn’t intend to give rules for pronunciation, only for spelling. The key point is that the spelling reflects the pronunciation, because speech is dominant. I did mention that some people say in Jesus’ name instead of saying in Jesus’s name. – tchrist Mar 26 '12 at 14:37
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Those examples are fine in my opinion, though preferences vary. A classic example in England is

And then there is the debate over St and St..

Henry
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  • I apologize if this sounds rude or harsh, but are rules like these up to personal preference, or are they more ingrained in English grammar rules? – nopcorn Mar 25 '12 at 22:01
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    They are personal preference in this particular case. If you pronounce the extra s then you should write it, but some English speakers pronounce it and others don't. – Henry Mar 25 '12 at 22:37
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    The possessive in English is always about how it's pronounced. It's grammar, and therefore is about the real (i.e, spoken) language. Spelling and especially punctuation is variable, but pronunciation is the true, the blushful Hippocrene. – John Lawler Mar 26 '12 at 00:31
  • These examples are all proper nouns which by their nature don't necessarily conform to grammatical rules. And whether there was ever more than one St James in a Newcastle park I really don't know :) – MikeJ-UK Mar 26 '12 at 11:43
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    @JohnLawler I cannot agree more strongly: you are exactly right. This critical point is lost in the other answers posted here and in all the answers in the supposedly dup questions, too. It’s therefore very frustrating that this crucial point of yours gets lost. – tchrist Mar 26 '12 at 14:26
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It's down to personal preference -- but the modern convention, in my opinion, is to omit the final s. I'd always advocate omitting the final s because it's simply unnecessary: the apostrophe, by itself, clearly denotes possession. Whether or not American English adopts this is another matter...

But with British usage, it can often be quite erratic and anachronistic. A typical example is when I get on the London underground every day (the Piccadilly line going eastwards). One stop is called Baron's Court and its immediate neighbour is Earls Court.

You also get this with particular brands who choose to omit the apostrophe for clarity (like Twinings, and Waterstone's has announced it's dropping its apostrophe soon). So, in modern usage, the general trend is to omit the apostrophe. Another convention I've worked a lot with (MHRA's -- which I only use in academic essays) chooses to use the additional s for singular possession, and omit it for plural possession; so, for example: the boss’s daughter and the bosses’ daughters.

To answer Henry's point, there is no debate over 'St' and 'St.'. Because St James' Park refers to Saint James, the use of St is a contraction. You put a full-stop after an abbreviation (like Prof.), but you never put a full-stop after a contraction because the final letter of the abbreviated form is the same as the final letter of the full form (which is why you see Mr, St, Mrs, etc.)

hohner
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    "it's dropping it's apostrophe" has an error – Henry Mar 25 '12 at 22:31
  • According to the Royal Parks it is St James's Park but for London Underground it is St. James's Park – Henry Mar 25 '12 at 22:35
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    @Henry If I said I was being deliberately ironic you wouldn't believe me, would you? :P – hohner Mar 25 '12 at 23:02
  • I would certainly accept deliberate to make a point. My comment was really aimed at later readers. – Henry Mar 25 '12 at 23:29
  • I've heard some say that you add apostrophe-s to a word with only one 's', but only apostrophe to a word with two s's. In other words, Charles's and Moses'. – zpletan Mar 26 '12 at 01:00
  • Another point of how erratic it can be in the UK, different papers use different styles. The Guardian tends to go with Burns' poems while The Times uses Burns's poems (or is it the other way around?) – Danger Fourpence Mar 26 '12 at 01:08
  • As another point, my spellchecker on Firefox did try to correct Burns's poems – Danger Fourpence Mar 26 '12 at 01:09
  • The right answer is not what you say. Your answer is wrong. The right anwer is that the spelling follows the pronunciation, and so if you say an s you add an s in spelling. The apostrophe can never stand in for an s sound. There are certain fossilized uses in official toponyms where you have to follow whatever the local spelling is no matter what the pronunciation, but that is a very rare exception. In all other cases, you have to spell it according to its pronunciation. See my answer for details. @MaxMackie should take careful note. – tchrist Mar 26 '12 at 16:01
  • @tchrist Actually, no. There are no absolute guidelines set out in stone. As I specified in my answer, it's really down to personal preference or an institution's stylistic guidelines; as long as you're consistent, it's fine. As to the spoken influence, I'm not really quite sure that's the case. I would pronounce St James' and St James's exactly the same. Why would the added s transform the word's pronunciation? – hohner Mar 26 '12 at 16:12
  • @Jamie That’s like asking why you would pronounce the s in the word Jamie’s! Because that’s how it’s done, is why: the added s reflects the word’s pronunciation. I have close family and friends who go by James, and I promise you that they all say James’s whatever with an added /ɨz/ (or /əz) added for the possessive. An apostrophe is strictly silent; it’s never pronounced at all, let alone as /ɨz/. It serves here only to mark the written word as being in the genitive, not to change its spoken pronunciation. For that, we have the letter s. – tchrist Mar 26 '12 at 16:23
  • @tchrist According to your theory, James' is pronounced differently from James's which, I argue, is wrong. The additional s should not transform the pronunciation: the possessive is pronounced the same with or without the added s. – hohner Mar 26 '12 at 16:28
  • @Jamie I strongly disagree with all that. It’s this very sort of thing that causes all the confusion. Stick with a strict spelling rule that reflects the pronunciation, and you have a deterministic and predictable system. Thrown it out, and you lose that. It is nonsensical. – tchrist Mar 26 '12 at 16:50
  • @tchrist I wrote down, on three different sheets of paper, the following: James' boat, Mary's Boat, and James's Boat. I asked 3 of my friends/family to read them aloud. Every single one of them pronounced James's and James' the same :P – hohner Mar 26 '12 at 16:53
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As an American English teacher I teach students not to use s's.

Strunk and White provide interesting and useful hints, but be careful as it's almost 100 years old and doesn't keep up with a lot of modern usage.

Brent
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Your question requires a two-part answer. You want to know if it is still the case that “Charles’s” is grammatically correct, as prescribed by Strunk and White over fifty years ago.

  1. It is the case that “Charles’s” is still grammatically correct, because writing reflects speech and most native speakers still pronounce the s twice.

  2. That is not to say that “Charles’ ” is ungrammatical: it simply reflects a choice to pronounce the s once. And it was not ungrammatical fifty years ago, either. The Elements Of Style has never been a useful book. It is merely a popular one:

    The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it. … Strunk had very little analytical understanding of syntax, White even less. Certainly White was a fine writer, but he was not qualified as a grammarian. (Geoffrey K. Pullum. “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice”, The Chronicle Review, April 17, 2009. Retrieved July 12, 2013.)

MetaEd
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