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?

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/