Do any major style guides frown on possessive acronyms?
One client’s style manual preferred
The SDMB primary objective is to fight ignorance.
to
The SDMB’s primary objective is to fight ignorance.
In reviewing a recent update, the preference is no longer stated. The manual is not comprehensive, so before I start using apostrophes with reckless abandon, I thought to ask the Dope.
Note I still prefer the first example and will continue with it. But sometimes it can take quite an effort to avoid the apostrophe, so this could make things flow a bit easier.
FWIW, I would always use the possessive. Your first sentence sounds completely wrong.
However, context is still necessary. What manual were you using, what field is it for, and when was it written? This sounds suspiciously like a very old fashioned style that has been lost in time.
I’m wondering if the preference is no longer stated because it was found to be rather ridiculous. “NASA’s plan to explore Venus was implemented in 2005” sounds natural and to my mind wouldn’t seem at all informal or improper, whereas “The NASA plan to…” sounds odd, and arguably could have a slightly different connotation.
Variation on this theme: if the initial mention is spelled out and defined as an acronym/initialism in parentheses, like so:
“The Department of Energy (DOE) has chosen…”
How does one make it possessive?
“The Department of Energy’s (DOE) leadership has chosen…”
“The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) leadership has chosen…”
To me, 2) sounds more euphonious, and obeys parallel structure. But it is a bit odd that following uses of the acronym will be just “DOE” and the initial definition is “DOE’s.”
Surprisingly, the Chicago Manual of Style Online apparently gets this very question so frequently that they won’t directly answer it:
Yeah, I know it should be re-written, but if I can’t convince the author to re-write, and I have to use a possessive original to define an acronym/initialism, I wish the Chicago Manual of Style Online would weigh in on one side or the other.
I’d welcome the Teeming Millions’s (TM’s)…uh, ™…uh…dammit…advice.
“DVD’s” isn’t possessive at all. It’s a plural. There was a [del]recent[/del] thread debating the use of the apostrophe in that case. Even among those advocating the use of apostrophe, there were various competing reasons WHY it should be used.
Only people should show possession. This rule is actually pretty much obsolete. I’m just noting that at one time that was the guideline. Prescriptivists oughta love it.
I agree it’s opaque. I take it to mean “in the next edition I hope we will issue an explicit ban on any construction that requires an acronym/initialism to be possessive. Rewrite to avoid.”
I would like to know who invented that rule and when. And why. Because in Old English and Middle English any noun could take the genitive case/possessive form, not just people’s. cite And what about the non-person possessive pronoun its? Doesn’t that violate the alleged rule? Special pleading for its to remain in the language?
E.g. OE on oðre healfe þæs mores ‘on the other side of the moor’ þæs landes sceawunge ‘the observation of the land’
ME Worldes blysse
The use of the of-possessive was an innovation in Middle English paralleling the French possessive with de. But Middle English didn’t have a rule that only people could have the -es possessive—did they?
Oh—Is that rule the reason why people started omitting the possessive from phrases like “two weeks’ notice,” forcing Lynne Truss to roam all over London with a magic marker filling in the missing apostrophes?
If you use an apostrophe in posessives AND ‘-is’ contractions, how do you tell the difference?
For example, does the phrase “That company really knows it’s sh**,” mean they’re really knowledgeable about their profession, or that they have some serious self-esteem issues?
The word “its” is an exception to the rule that possessives get apostrophes, precisely for this reason. “It’s” is the contraction of “it is”; “its” is the impersonal possessive.
Your phrase isn’t ambiguous unless spoken. In writing, the apostrophe makes a difference.