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Whose what?

This week’s words
Aaron’s rod
chef’s kiss
rat’s nest
devil’s tattoo
Adam’s ale

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Relative usage over time

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Words with movie connections

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I say Richards’. Why? Because that’s what my (late) Mom would say. Mom was The Apostrophe Queen. Even in her last years, when dementia had dulled her faculties significantly, she would spot and deplore out loud any misplaced apostrophe on a restaurant menu, shop awning, or sign. Debate all you want, but Mom rules.
-Ellen D. Murphy, Portland, Maine (radochas gmail.com)

As an English composition and medical punctuation workshop instructor, I always taught that if adding an apostrophe does NOT add another pronounced syllable, then simply add the apostrophe with no following ‘s’: in, say, the phrase “Mary Richards’ popularity”, “Richards’” is usually pronounced as just two syllables; same with “Lizzie’s popularity”. But if adding an apostrophe DOES add another pronounced syllable, then follow the apostrophe with an ‘s’: “Liz’s popularity”, “Christmas’s popularity”.

Of course, people -- and contexts -- don’t always agree whether or not adding an apostrophe (especially to a z-sound-ending noun) adds a new pronounced syllable: “Jesus’s life” vs. “in Jesus’ name”.

It seemed to help my students if I gleefully jammed, into one example sentence, illustrations of the bothersome point:

“Richard’s and Chris’s shared goal was to emulate Mary Richards’ iconic TV smile -- a goal that all the Richards and Chrises and wannabe Mary Richardses of the world might enjoy; but perplexed by their memories of past Christmases and by Christmas’s continuing popularity, Richard and Chris were not sure about Jesus’s vs. Santa Claus’s smiles.”
-Mary E. Knatterud, Minneapolis, Minnesota (knattm3 gmail.com)

It can’t be simply “Richard”, because that’s actually dropping a letter of his name.

It can’t be Richards with no apostrophe, because that calls for “the” in front to make it a qualifier rather than a possessive: “the Richards legacy”.

That leaves Richards’ as you used it or Richards’s. In my view, the governing principle here, evolved through common usage, is how it rolls off the tongue when there’s already an s sound at the end.

Roger Maris’s legacy is a home run record that lasted over 60 years. Extra s, si!

Fred Mertz’s legacy is as an iconic supporting character for Lucy Ricardo. Extra s, si!

[He] revived the Society to carry [on] Richards’s legacy. Extra s, no! The first s being preceded by a d is converted to a z sound, making two separate z sounds in a row when the possessive apostrophe s is added. Too hard to say in a multi-syllable word, doesn’t sound right.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

What became known as the greengrocer’s apostrophe was seen in signs outside greengrocers’ shops in England when I lived there in the sixties.

Ripe tomatoe’s three shillings a pound
Cheap banana’s
Juicy orange’s

You’ve no idea what a fight I had with Grammarly (to fix three errors press tab) to leave those three apostrophes alone.
-Barbara Bushby, Longmont, Colorado (bushmikk gmail.com)

Some of us will always need apostrophes.
-Sandy D’Amato, Memphis, Tennessee (sdamato100 aol.com)

Here’s a rule breaker for you: Harris’s hawk:


There is also Harris’s antelope squirrel, which, being proper names, didn’t change with the grammatical times. Perhaps you can identify when the grammar powers decided to drop the s after an apostrophe.

Regarding Aaron’s rod, which sounds like a teenage description of a body part, I have most often seen and heard it described as the staff of Aaron. I depicted a flowering version for a tallit I created for a client descended from Aaron.


-Beth Surdut, Santa Fe, New Mexico (info bethsurdut.com)

I’m a longtime subscriber, also from Seattle. In 2015 I moved to London, to the Angel neighborhood in the Islington borough. I was walking through Camden Passage a few years back, and looked up to see a plaque commemorating Alexander Cruden, who died there in 1770. I looked him up, and this man was hilarious: He would walk around London with a sponge and paintbrush, and “fix” incorrect signs (including wrong apostrophes, but also things he found “morally incorrect”). He was also legitimately insane. I love history.
-Denise Jo, London, UK (dj.jonestown gmail.com)

The US Board on Geographic Names abhors the apostrophe. The Massachusetts offshore island Martha’s Vineyard is a rare exception. The deletion of apostrophes from existing place names created a few oddities, like a hamlet on the East Branch Delaware River in New York known as Fishs Eddy. I suspect that the location may have originally been named for the prominent 19th-century New York politician Hamilton Fish or a member of his family, rather than for any aquatic creature found in the river.
-Charlie O’Reilly, Dunedin, Florida (charliez0726 gmail.com)

As you note it’s also about when to resist the urge to make something possessive: leave the apostrophes out! Here in Maine and New Hampshire two examples come to mind from when visitors feel the need to insert them where they don’t belong. The body of water off Mount Desert Island/Bar Harbor, ME, is Frenchman Bay, not Frenchman’s. And if you visit Mt. Washington and want a challenging hike, try Tuckerman Ravine, not Tuckerman’s! Either way, enjoy the vistas for the vista’s sake ;-)
-Chuck Dinsmore, Damariscotta, Maine (salamanderdoc gmail.com)

Indeed, in the German language, there are no apostrophes. Just the s. So, as you wrote below, context is king.
-John Lavallee, Munich, Germany (john.lavallee tdsynnex.com)

In my (former English teacher’s) view, we’d be much better off without the apostrophe used to indicate possession. We did without it till three or four centuries ago, our sister language German has lived happily enough without it (although, God knows, German should have shed declensions when English did) and, best of all, we’d get rid of those extraneous apostrophes having nothing to do with possession that people insert in plurals.
-Richard K. Cross, Bethesda, Maryland (rcross umd.edu)

I vote for dropping the apostrophe altogether. The reason is that the Scandinavian languages do quite well without it. They use the S as a possessive indicator with no problems.
-Robert Graziani, Sugar Land, Texas (rgraziani mac.com)

If memory serves, Bernard Shaw used no apostrophes.
-Cynthia Hood, Sherman Oaks, California (cynthiahood mac.com)

Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, NY, used to be called Proctor’s Theatre. They dropped the apostrophe, maybe when “www.” entered our lives? You would have to check with them on their history. They are clearly sentimental about it, though. The cafe in the theatre lobby is called The Apostrophe.
-Kathryn Reinhardt, Willsboro, New York (kathryn.reinhardt gmail.com)

I believe no apostrophes worked for Cormac McCarthy. It took a few pages to adapt to his punctuation style but then, as an English teacher, I found it liberating.
-Tim Milhorn, Chico, California (tim.milhorn yahoo.com)

It is often said that apostrophes to denote possession are not needed. That is more than 90% true. But not 100%. Look at these examples:

Why should we give American taxpayers’ money as freebies?
Changes in the health service have made doctors’ work harder.

The apostrophe serves much the same purpose as a road sign announcing that the shopping centre is away to the left: though the sign changes nothing, the centre being where it is, sign or no sign, it is helpful.
-G. Taylor, Lasswade, Scotland (krapserves aol.com)

It would be sacrilege to dishonor the Dominican nuns of my youth. Long live the apostrophe!
-James Mason, Albuquerque, New Mexico (beryberygood yahoo.com)

North Queensland is the place to go for apostrophes, there are more per square mile than anywhere else on the planet. All plurals are automatically decorated with an apostrophe before the final ‘s’, as is the word ‘it’s’ when it is a possessive not a contraction. One sees them everywhere, and not just on shop signs, in store windows, hospitals and supermarkets -- I have even seen them liberally sprinkled over the text of the prospectus for an expensive private school.
-Frances Gillespie, Fortingall, UK (frandavidgill outlook.com)

My friend recently told me of a sentence they have in English class illustrating the importance of the apostrophe. “There is a difference (small but vital) between a business that knows its sh*t and a business that knows it’s sh*t.”
-Otto Muller, South Africa (otto1muller gmail.com)

More years ago than I will admit to, a controversy arose in The Sydney Morning Herald about the Mens (the toilet for males) in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Should it have an apostrophe? I believed that it should, and I suggested that one be taken from the Ladie’s Hairdresser in the Sydney suburb of Lewisham. Unfortunately, the whole controversy made no impression at all. Both sorts of error are more common than they were back then.
-Grant Agnew, Brisbane, Australia (ggttwwaa gmail.com)

My contention is that the apostrophe (in English, at least) should be treated on a par with the letters of the alphabet; it’s part of the spelling of certain words, operating at word level rather than, as punctuation does, at sentence level.
-Dave Erickson, San Jose, California (daveeee sbcglobal.net)

The apostrophe is needed to transliterate those languages (such as Hawaiian) that have distinct, language-specific phonemes that are represented by it. The glottal stop is such a phoneme and is very common in Hawaiian. Actually the name of the island is Hawai’i, although in the written language the actual sign used is a reversed apostrophe. As I write, Kilauea is erupting from (what I assume) is its main vent, called pu’u ‘o’o. Pick the apostrophes out of that!
-Michael Poxon, Norwich, UK (and sometime briefly Hawaiian resident) (mikethestarman gmail.com)

From Shropshire Star:
-John Craw, Glenford, Ohio (thecrawh gmail.com)

Email of the Week -- Brought to you buy One Up! -- Perfectly horrible family fun.

Many years ago while working at a market, I saw where a clerk had written a sign reading: “Bagel’s 50 cents”. I said to him, “We sell ‘Bagels’ as a plural, not as a possessive. There shouldn’t be an apostrophe!” To which he haughtily replied, “I went to a Catholic school. We didn’t have bagels.”
-Nan Parati

Tous les méchants sont buveurs d’eau:
C’est bien prouvé par le déluge
Louis-Philippe, Comte de Ségur (1753-1830)

(The wicked are all drinkers of water -- as is demonstrated by the Flood)

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: