Blast From the Past: Possessives with names/words ending in "s"

[bluewolf458]

The apostrophe (') may be the simplest and yet most frequently misused mark of punctuation in English. It was introduced into English in the 16th century from Latin and Greek, in which it served to mark the loss of letters

Comments

[thistle_chaser]

Interesting! I learned that you use an 's unless the name was "ancient, biblical".

Moses' boat.
Jesus' beard.
Thomas's book.

[jennickels]

I was taught only the apostrophe with names ending in s and I just can't get used to the "new" way of doing it. Whenever I read something like "James's" I cringe. It sounds wrong in my head because I would never pronounce it "Jameses."

I learned to put only one space between sentences (and that was hard), but I don't think I can change the way I do possessives.

[bluewolf458]

I tend to agree with you, because I too was taught 'only the apostrophe' if a name ended in s, but in writing for fandom grammar I have to go with what today's educationalists say. However, it's still a case of either or. Nobody has come out yet to say that s' is wrong even though many authorities say s's is the preferred form now.

[sidlj]

I spent a minute agonizing over the plural possesive of boy earlier today, and I'm happy to see I got it right! :-)

[bluewolf458]

At least the plural possessive has a positive rule :-)