I believe when I was little I was taught that when a name ends with an ‘s’ and one wants to indicate possession, apostrophe-s is added. Thus, Jesus’s and not Jesus’ or Jones’s and not Jones’.
But I’ve seen the apostrophe-nothing frequently. In typing this post, my spell-checker objects to Jesus’s and offers Jesus’ instead. (Jones is acceptable either way.) If I say something belongs to Jesus, there is an -es sound at the end. The apostrophe indicates (to me, anyway) the break between the final s-sound of the name and the final z-sound of the possessive formation.
So what’s the rule? Apostrophe-s, or apostrophe-nothing?
Heck, I’ve seen a grammar guide that says to use Candice’ and Feliz’s. As far as I can tell, the concept is that Jesus’s (which, incidentally, is not in my spell check) would be pronounced JEE-zuhs-es, while Jesus’ is pronounced JEE zuhsss. As I use the latter pronunciation, I also use the latter spelling. (Not to mention, that’s what all my books about him say. I’m not going to make up my own word.)
On the other hand, I do say Candice’s and Feliz’s, so that’s how I spell them. Really, the idea of English having rules is fairly outmoded; it merely has guidelines for formal use. French, on the other hand…
Why the capitalized R? Why the comma after “Really”? Why the capital “E” in “English”? Why the “ly” added to “fair”? Why the use of a semi-colon after “outmodeled”? Why did you spell “capitalized” with an “a” and not an “o”?
Truly, knowing and using the rules of English still serve a good purpose.
I thought this was one of the Anglo/American divides. British English prefers Jesus’s and American English prefers Jesus’. Neither is inherently more correct than the other.
I was taught that if the name ends with an s, it just gets the apostrophe at the end. I’ve never heard of the ‘apostrophe-nothing’ rule. That one just seems wrong to me somehow.
and similar phrases. It can quite complicated and even ambiguous:
The son of the Queen of England’s daughter is the daughter of the Queen of England’s son.
is four-way ambiguous and two of the ways are tautological and the other two are oxymorons.
My rule for making plural of acronyms is to use a lower case s with capitalized acronyms, but an apostrophe s with a lower case acronym. Illogical, but the rules have to bend to the necessity to communicate.
This is why editors use style guides. AP doesn’t use the s after the apostrophe for most of these; Chicago (The Chicago Manual of Style) uses the s for most names. Exceptions, per Chicago:
[ul]
[li]Words plural in form, singular in meaning (the United States)[/li][li]Names like “Euripides” (two or more syllables, ends with an “eez” sound)[/li][li]Names and words ending with an unpronounced “s” (Descartes, the marquis)[/li][li]“For ___ sake” phrases (for goodness’ sake)[/li][/ul]
I am summarizing a five-page section here, and not getting into exceptions and peculiarities.
Concur. As with the “Oxford comma”, journalistic style attempts to minimize extra characters (hence AP’s prefrerence), while book and technical-writing style prefers adding the characters to eschew confusion (hence the Vhicago Manual’s preference).
IMO (and this is not a rule except for my own writing), use -s’ for the plural possessive (of words with plurals in -s, of course); use -‘s for all other usages, including “oxen’s”, “Jules’s”, and “lovingkindness’s”. Only in those rare usages where no /iz/ sound is appended and tradition calls for -s’ should one violate the rule, as in Twix’s example “for goodness’ sake” or Shakespeare’s “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear” where it’s clear that “Jesus’” is only two syllables in a prosodic piece.
There is not just one universally accepted rule. This comes up from time to time and links to threads plus other authoritative info can be found at my unofficial General Questions FAQ.
Another distinction is in journalism. In print journalism, they like to save as many characters as possible. That’s why commas are frequently missing from lists before the final and (example: “eggs, milk and cheese” as opposed to “eggs, milk, and cheese.” In print, most of the time, they would omit the superfluous “s.”
