Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Dastardly Debate About Possessives Ending in S

If Us Magazine is doing it, you can bet a lot of other people are, too. Us has decided to end the possessive case of words like Paris (as in Hilton) with an s’ rather than an s’s. For example:

Paris’ $250 million pool party for her newest dog ...

They’re using the style convention where when a word ends in a sibilant (a consonant that sounds like a hiss, like Paris), it’s fair game to end with the more visually attractive s’.

Paris’ does look better than Paris’s. But I’m in the camp where you always add the final s after the apostrophe. I like how Paris’ looks, but I don’t like how it sounds in my head.

Both styles are correct. What’s incorrect is to be inconsistent. Choose one style and stick to it.

p.s. When the word in question is plural—e.g., the players’ wives—just add an apostrophe. But you knew that.

p.s. When you get all hot and bothered about the issue as I so often do (just think of our company name, Turner-Riggs) try to reframe the sentence. Instead of “Turner-Riggs’ company mascot was fired soon after the unfortunate event,” I’d write “Turner-Riggs fired their company mascot soon after the unfortunate event.” And avoid the passive voice in the process!

I always like to read something like this. That is usually a bit hard to find valuable information on the internet. And I found your post using Yahoo and I can say I the time spent was worth reading.