I'm sure I've asked this before but I just can't find the answer. It's to do with showing possession when using names that end in s. So for Chris, would you type Chris's hat, or Chris' hat. ? Because for some reason, I type possessive Chris as Chris' But then I type possessive boss, as boss's. Strangely, my narrator reads Chris' as Chris but reads boss's as boss's. So now I'm wondering if I should actually be putting the s after the apostrophe when dealing with possession for characters whose names end in s ...
It's a style choice - no right or wrong. Do whatever you prefer. I'd probably lean to s's because then it reads more phonetically, but when I think about it I tend to just use s'.
English 101: its : belongs to "it" it 's : it is Lew's: belongs to Lew Chris': belongs to Chris: boats: many boats boats': belonging to many boats. And I am an engineer!
I get all that, @Lew but the fact that with an s ending name, you have the choice (it's not a 'rule') and the fact that my narrator only narrates the possession if the 's is there even with a name ending in s, had me wondering if I'd actually been doing it wrong ...
I'd go with "Chris'." 1) that's what I see most often; and 2) even if it is a stylistic choice, a lot of people seem to think "Chris's" is a mistake. So if you use the latter at least a certain percentage of people will think you don't know what you're doing, but with the former I don't know that anyone thinks it is wrong.
What do guides like the Chicago Manual of Style and such say? IIRC there were a few rules and sub-rules. I like writer's choice, though, as some have said.
Sorry, my Catholic nuns who taught me English 60 years ago would beat you mercilessly with rulers for using Chris's. If someone thinks that is correct, please cite reference.
The Bristol University's grammar website has this to say about apostrophes and proper nouns. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_10.htm Apparently both usages are correct in most cases: If the possessor is a singular noun that happens to end in an -s, there is some debate about whether the apostrophe is simply added after the -s or whether an -'s is needed. It appears that both are acceptable. Whichever you decide to use, make sure you are consistent. The university English department's style guide recommends that proper nouns that end in -s form their possessive form by adding -'s. Have you seen James' book? Have you seen James's book? The exceptions to this rule are proper nouns that are Latin or Greek in origin. Odysseus' adventures spanned many miles and many many years. Pythagoras' theorem has baffled generations of school children. .................. Personally, I always use the 's ending. It always looks better and is closer to what we actually say in speech. We don't say "James book" or "Chris book" when we mean "James's book" or "Chris's book" do we?
The CMoS accepts both, though they prefer "apostrophe + s" over just an apostrophe. It's a stylistic choice.
Word doesn't flag it as wrong. And the narrator reads it correctly. My mind thinks it's wrong, but nothing was backing up my mind! It's like the old, you know, you see a word so often, you start questioning whether it's actually correct.
My understanding is that if the possessing word already ends in an 'S' (or is a plural), the apostrophe is stuck on the end (no double 's')
I got that bit about plurals when I was researching nurses' station, as in, station belonging to many nurses, not one nurse. But it seems either is appropriate for possession when it's one person with a name/title ending in s.
When making a choice like this, I sometimes decide based on the ease of search-and-replace if I need to change my choice--for example, if whoever I'm submitting to has a style book that tells me which one to use. A mass-replace of 's with s' won't work, because many 's should remain 's. A mass-replace of s' with 's should work. And even if you decide to do the search-and-replace by inspecting them one by one through the manuscript, there probably won't be too many of them.
That's true. Most of them will just be to do with Chris, so doing a search for Chris, will bring them all up and allow me to look at each one. Then I'll do another check when I edit.
