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  1. beehoney

    beehoney Member

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    Is it Dennis’ dog or Dennis’s dog?

    Discussion in 'Word Mechanics' started by beehoney, Jan 14, 2018.

    Hello Writing-Community,


    The most time it’s easy to add a “’s” or “s’”. It’s easy when you write Mandy’s cabin or girls’ cabin.

    But when I write about someone which name ends with s: What should I use? For example, if I write about a boy who name is Dennis and that he has a dog. Is it This is Dennis’ dog or is it This is Dennis’s dog?


    Please answer this question.

    Bye,

    Beehoney
     
  2. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Beehoney, please note that we have many sub-forums for different topics. This question clearly falls under the Word Mechanics subheading. Please use the appropriate subforums.
     
  3. beehoney

    beehoney Member

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    @Wreybies Thank you. I didn't know which forum topic was the right one.
     
  4. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    As to the question, I was taught not to confuse words that simply end in S with words that are being pluralized with an S ending. There's only one Dennis in question (not plural), so it would be Dennis's dog.

    I've heard people logic out that it depends on how you pronounce it, whether you just say an S sound with no additional vowel or if it's an -es sound. That's not a rule I could follow since it's rather variable depending on individual pronunciation, region, etc.
     
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  5. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    @Wreybies is wrong and I'm right... you should spell it out based on how you'd pronounce it! (And the good folks at Oxford dictionary, along with other august authorities, back me up - they also think Wreybies is wrong! https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/apostrophe#apostrophes_showing_possession)

    I agree that it would be variable based on pronunciation and region, but... them's the breaks! On the plus side, I think there's often a connection between the way people would pronounce the word and whether the "s" only comes from pluralization.
     
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  6. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    The OED? You mean "Her Majesty's Rules for Subjugating the Colonies and What To Do With All Those Spare U's You've got Lying Around"?

    I'm a 'Murican. I don't follow that stuff. ;)
     
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  7. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

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    If I recall correctly, in The Elements of Style, Strunk and White advocate using 's even if the name ends in s, so it would be Dennis's dog. The exception to this is the case of Jesus. You would write Jesus' AK-47, or Jesus' stash of gay porn.

    Personally, I have a knee-jerk reaction against anything in that soggy wad of sewage produced by Strunk and White, so my approach to this problem is probably more idiosyncratic and less consistent than most. I tend to follow Robert Burchfield's The New Fowler's Modern English Usage; it's complicated and exasperating, but very detailed. Burchfield recommends Dennis's, because the name is short enough, but he'd omit the s if the name ends in an -iz sound, like Bridges'. He leaves the s off classical names (Xerxes', Socrates') and some French names. Place names may be treated differently. On Tuesdays during leap years, 'z is permissible (or not - I may have misread that...). (Actually, that last sentence is bullshit, but as authoritative as Burchfield is, he does tend to induce me to write like that.)
     
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  8. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Traditionally, it would be Dennis' dog. But modern usage favors appending the s, and doesn't treat it as superfluous or redundant. It's a recent enough change that neither is really "wrong,” though.
     
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  9. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    There's no such thing as a spare U. They're all absolutely necessary.

    Every U is sacred, every U is great.
    If a U is wasted, God gets quite irate.
     
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  10. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

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    Nothing compares 2 U.
     
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  11. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    Well, I'm one of those people. Of course, I'm also one of those people who actually pronounce the "s" if it glides off the tongue effortlessly, as in "Jesus's teachings" or "Moses's doctrines." And I write it that way, as well. I believe that what we're trying to do as writers is mirror the spoken language as accurately as possible.

    So I would have no problem with the following: "I visited Mr. Jones's house yesterday. The Joneses have a four-bedroom ranch house. There's a lot of them in the Joneses' neighborhood."

    At this point, somebody might jump in and say, "Aha! You advocate writing in a way that accurately reflects speech, yet you used the abbreviation 'Mr.' Shouldn't you have written that 'Mister'?" It's a fair cop, but in this case, when people see "Mr." nowadays, they automatically supply the missing letters. In fact, if it were Mrs. Jones we were talking about, I'd write it as "Mrs. Jones's house" without a thought, because writing it as "Missus Jones's house" just looks affected to me.

    Yes, I agree that the rule may vary with individual pronunciation, but how many people actually omit the final possessive "s" when speaking of "Jesus's teachings"? Nobody I've heard, although I've heard the phrase from Americans, Brits, Australians, and South Africans. It would come out sounding like "Jesus teachings" and that seems just wrong to me.
     
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2018
  12. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    For my part, I tend to be a traditionalist, for what it's worth. I still type two spaces after a stop, and I prefer Dennis' dog. Dennis's dog strikes me as very Slitherin,
     
  13. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    How would you pronounce it if you were reading it out loud?
     

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