A WORD, PLEASE:No dominant rules for possessives

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who were taught clear, specific rules for making possessives of singular words ending with “s” and those who weren’t. And, hands down, the luckier ones are in the latter group. That’s because, contrary to what many teachers and even style books will tell you, there are no clear, specific rules for forming possessives of words like “boss,” “Thomas” and “Jesus.”

This is something that Barbara in Burbank has just learned the hard way.

“One that drives me crazy is the Los Angeles Times’s (NOT The Los Angeles Times’) habit of just slapping an apostrophe on the end of any noun that ends in ‘s’ to make it possessive, which is wrong,” Barbara wrote.

According to some style guides, this is indeed wrong. The problem is that other equally respected style guides say those style guides are wrong. And there’s no one person or book in a position to say which is right.

Take, for example, the “Associated Press Stylebook” — the go-to guide for most of our nation’s newspapers.

AP says, for singular common nouns ending in “s,” you should add an apostrophe and an “s.” Their example, “the hostess’s invitation.” But (there’s always a but) they make an exception if the next word begins with “s.” In those cases, AP says, add just the apostrophe: “the hostess’ seat.”

The “Chicago Manual of Style,” which governs book publishing, doesn’t make this distinction. Whether it’s a proper name or a common noun, Chicago says, add the apostrophe and the “s.” So it’s “the boss’s job” and “Thomas’s car.”

Lest you think Chicago is simpler, I should add that, Chicago does not agree with AP’s position that you should make an exception when the word that follows begins with an “s.” No, Chicago makes an exception for just one specific word that follows that begins with an “s” — “sake.” So, “for goodness’ sake” is right according to both Chicago and AP.

But it was from Barbara’s next comment that I could tell exactly where she got her information:

“The only exceptions to the s-apostrophe-s construction to indicate possession are (did you know this?) Jesus and Moses. I don’t know why this is, but it’s cool.”

I don’t know why it is, either, but I know where and when it is. It was the year 1920 in the Cornell classroom of one Professor William Strunk.

This was a rule that Strunk required his students to observe in their term papers. It’s not a rule he suggested for you and me. No doubt, if he knew that E.B. White would later help revise his little classroom guide into a mass-marketed list of commands for the general public, he might have done things differently.

Chicago, for example, doesn’t give special treatment to Moses and Jesus. They save theirs for Euripides and Xerxes. This has nothing to do with religion or philosophy. It’s about pronunciation. According to Chicago, “The possessive is formed without an additional ‘s’ for a name of two or more syllables that ends in an ‘eez’ sound.”

Of course, this is just one entry in a whole subsection of Chicago’s possessives rules labeled “Exceptions to the General Rule and Some Options.”

There are more. But I’ll spare you. Because, at the end of the day, Chicago says, “Those uncomfortable with these rules, exceptions, and options outlined above may prefer the system, formerly more common, of simply omitting the possessive ‘s’ on all words ending in ‘s.’”

In other words, all this stuff is one big pain in the “s.”