Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 1994 05:58:54 GMT
Subject: Re: The curse of the apostrophe

da...@s0dl.exnet.com (Dave Lockwood) writes:

> Normally, singular nouns prefix the possessive 's' with the
> apostrophe, and plural nouns suffix it. The exception is a singular
> noun already ending in 's' where suffixing is used....

And he...@ucthpx.uct.ac.za (Heidi de Wet) responds:

> Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Singular nouns take "'s", except in a few
> cases where they end in "s" already ("James's book" is correct, but
> "Jesus' words" is fairly standard.)....

Wrong indeed, but if I were he I wouldn't take your word for it.  Who
says it's right?  I won't take Dave Lockwood's word for it, either,
especially if he's too careless to get "bizarre" right.  In fact,
both of your willingness to hand down your stylistic preference as
authoritative without further justification is, to me, a reason to
disregard your judgment on matters of style.

But there are other ways of arriving at a decision.  The Associated
Press style book says to use "'s" for single-syllable words but a bare
apostrophe for longer words--a bizarre rule.  It made me wonder last
summer when the New York Times reported that Andrew Wiles had proved
Fermat's Last Theorem.  They mentioned "Wiles'" proof on page 1 and
"Wiles's" proof on page D22.  I wondered which is the Times's style,
or whether it might be a disagreement over the number of syllables
in "Wiles".

Or his age?  Strunk and White make exceptions for "ancient proper
names" without explanation.  And is theirs a reasoned decision?  Or
just a cowardly unwillingness to take King James to task for the
spelling of "Jesus'"?

Fowler goes into more detail:

  It was formerly customary, when a word ended in "-s", to write its
  possessive with an apostrophe but no additional "s", e.g. Mars'
  hill, Venus' Bath, Achilles' thews.  In verse and in poetic or
  reverential contexts, this custom is retained....  But elsewhere
  we now usually add the "s" and the syllable--always when the word
  is monosyllabic, and preferably when it is longer, Charles's Wain,
  St. James's Street, Jones's children, the Rev. Septimus's
  surplice, Pythagoras's doctrines.

(So it's clear that the front page editor was simply being properly
worshipful.)  But Fowler still doesn't justify the syllabic criterion.

Still, my curiosity is aroused as to where Dave Lockwood got his
singularly bizarre idea.  Is he one of those who follows Fowler's
former custom?  Is he immersed in a dialect that follows this custom?
Or did he learn his style from the ragtag rabble of Usenet, who are
quite willing to speak of "Oz' tin woodsman's ax' head" now that their
schoolteacher isn't around to rap their knuckles for it?

Dan Hoey - Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil - Striking like a boat from the blue