The apostrophe, that is. And what I’ve been seeing lately makes my eyes bleed, y’all.
I know I’m not the first. (Here’s looking at you, Lynn Truss. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, but you need a copyeditor, too, friend.) Most recently, Kate Brannen wrote a clever article about how to sign your Christmas cards, if you send them (and I hope you send one to me). My friend Cyndi brought it to my attention.
The Irishman and I might sign our cards …
Merry Christmas from the Hampsons **
… not the Hampson’s, as one sometimes sees. As Cyndi noted, “Though we be many, we be not possessive.”
You know about the possessive case, right? Wikipedia says, “A possessive form is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. … Most European languages feature possessive forms associated with personal pronouns, like the English my, mine, your, yours, his, and so on.” Possessives can also be formed by nouns (the cat’s meow) or proper nouns (Jamie’s book).
But what, Cyndi asked, about plural possessives? How do we word our party invitations?
Oooo, that’s a good question! No prob:
Merry Christmas from the Hampson family.
Merry Christmas from the Hampsons.
Meet at the Hampsons’ home for a Christmas party.
[Alternately, same meaning] Meet at the Hampson home for a Christmas party.
See? The apostrophe has nothing to do with making plurals. We make a plural by adding s or es. Thus if your last name ends in s or z …
Merry Christmas from the Williams family.
Merry Christmas from the Williamses.
Meet at the Williamses’ home for a Christmas party.
[Alternately, same meaning] Meet at the Williams home for a Christmas party.
To recap, the general rule for possessives, according to the Chicago Manual of Style, is this:
The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s. The possessive of plural nouns (except for a few irregular plurals, like children, that do not end in s) is formed by adding an apostrophe only.
This should get you through the holiday season. Though perhaps I should reiterate that while Chicago does allow for some exceptions to the general rule—for the sake of euphony, a few expressions with singular nouns ending in s use an apostrophe alone, such as for righteousness’ sake—we do not omit the possessive s on all words ending in s (again, only the plural ones). In other words:
Dylan Thomas’s poetry
Etta James’s voice
his business’s primary occupation
Euripides’s tragedies
Jesus’s parables
I know that last one may shock some of you (as it does my version of Microsoft Word), but it’s true.
The apostrophe, according to Henry Hitchings’s The Language Wars, was promoted by a Parisian printer in 1520, made its first appearance in English text in 1559, but its use was rare before the seventeenth century. And,
Initially it was employed to signify the omission of a sound in a text (usually a printed play). Then it came to signify possession, as can be seen in the Fourth Folio of Shakespeare’s works in 1685, and its possessive use was confined to the singular. But writers’ decisions about where to locate it in a word were haphazard, and in the eighteenth century its use became erratic. … The apostrophe’s correct use was vigorously debated by grammarians throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As this brief account … indicates, punctuation comes and goes, and its history is more complicated than we may assume.***
Indeed. Holler at me if you need help.
* A quote from “The Possessive Apostrophe” by Elizabeth S. Sklar, in College English (1976).
** Actually, my name is still Chavez. There’s a lot of paperwork involved in changing a name, you know.
*** Transcribed by me from page 265 of my hardcover copy published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux © 2011.
Tweet: This should get you through the holiday season without an apostrophe catastrophe.
Tweet: See? The apostrophe has nothing to do with making plurals.
Tweet: But what about plural possessives? How do we word our party invitations?
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