By the way, this is a story about a girl named Tana Tavi
(I’m not sure how I intended for that to be pronounced) and a balloon that
carries her away from a birthday party. She smiles throughout the whole
adventure, even though her problem of continuously floating away never gets
solved. I find that a little odd.
This picture has nothing to do with apostrophes; I just
think it’s funny.
Now that I have a grasp on apostrophes used for possession,
things are going much smoother. Well, they were
going smoothly until I started working on my current project in late February. Even with all the time I have put in doing research, I am still seriously uncertain
about the use of apostrophes after names ending in “s.”
And I’m not the only one.
As I wrote my first draft, I assumed, when it came to names
ending in “s,” that there shouldn’t be an added “s” after the apostrophe (I’m
not sure whether I thought this because I’d been taught this way or because I
just pulled it out of my ass). For example, I’ve spent the last two and a half
years writing about my youngest daughter and the things she possesses like so:
-
Iris’ popcorn
-
Iris’ sister (Okay, this was
just a shameless way of getting a chance to post a picture of my adorable
children.)
I decided that I really ought to purchase more grammar books
so that I wasn’t looking up the majority of my grammar questions on the internet
(and subsequently becoming distracted by Facebook). My first purchase was
Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. It
was a nice, quick little read. Personally, I thought the section on active
voice was lacking, but who am I to argue with over fifty years of hard work? The
sections covering basic rules of grammar were very straight forward as well as
helpful. Strunk and White had this to say about the formation of possessive
singular nouns: “Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding ‘s. Follow
this rule whatever the final consonant.”
Okay, okay. If that’s the rule, why do we see things written
without the added “s,” so frequently? Signs, advertisements and even businesses
often drop that final letter. We see it because technically, it isn’t wrong. Apparently
it’s all a matter of personal choice, style, and consistency. Oh, style, always
in the way. What’s the rule? Just tell me the rule!
Mignon Gogarty with Grammar Girl (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com)
agrees, although she prefers to drop off that second “s” after the apostrophe.
The Associated Press Style also
recommends this form, but, as far as I know, The Washington Post prefers the “s.”
Did you just hear a wet, juicy explosion from somewhere in
the distance? That was my head exploding. That’s the second time in a matter of
days. Reading Lynne Truss’s (or is it Lynne Truss’?!) Eats, Shoots and Leaves reiterated the same sentiment. She does,
however, give a few nice examples as to when an author might try and leaving
off the tricky added “s.” Names that end in an “iz” sound and names from the
ancient world are some cases. And, she says, Jesus’ (see what I did there?)
name always does without the “s.”
As for my own work, I’m going to just chose one and stick
with it. At the moment my manuscript includes an “s” after the apostrophe for
names ending in “s,” but I’m not set on it. I’ll leave that up to any editors
who may (hopefully) come across it and set out to tackle my manuscript. If I
worry over these tricky possessive apostrophes any longer, I may end up
throwing my laptop and all of my grammar books out the window.
P.S. I promise to
stop posting pictures from my childhood writing workshops now!
No comments:
Post a Comment