From informal polling of my students over the years, I've gotten the
impression that most were taught *a* rule for punctuating plural
possessives, but very few were told that styles can differ, and that a
form like "boss's" (used as a genitive singular, not a mistaken form for
a simple plural) could be judged correct in one publication but not
another.  I'm a bit worried that some of the authors of state
standardized tests don't know there are multiple styles, either.

 

--- Bill Spruiell

 

 

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit
Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 10:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Two possessive questions

 

Geoff,

Style manuals adopt different conventions for use of ...s' and ...s's.
My preference is the same as The New Yorker's: The only time an
apostrophe alone is added is following a plural s. So it's:

the car's driver
the cars' drivers
the bus's driver
the buses' drivers
Mr. Smith's car
the Smiths' cars
Ms. Jones's car
the Joneses' cars

A simple rule to teach students is that if you add an additional "iz"
sound to form the possessive, you add 's. If no additional sound is
added to form the possessive, you add just an apostrophe.

Dick Veit



On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

First [question] involves the formation of the possessive with a proper
name ending in "s." The writer adds "...'s" to Summers's name in the
possessive case - but shouldn't the possessive be Summers' - or didn't
it used to be? 

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