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gwynOkay, I was surprised by how many of you responded in comments and e-mail that you wanted to see a usage/language “column.” I tried to think of a nice safe first entry, something like the myth of till/’til/until, but the more I thought, the more I realized it had to be about the single thing I spend most of my time fixing and explaining, that inevitably bogs down my class discussion: the possessive apostrophe. I’m flinchy about this topic, because I got seriously scorched on a list once for bringing this up as an example of why I think it’s so hard to teach “right” and “wrong.” Not flamed, but basically told to shut the fuck up because no one cares. So, still flinchy...
And I thought![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tiashome might have had a good point about making this language/writing thingie a different LJ or community even — if people think they’d prefer I take this elsewhere, let me know. God knows I have enough codes for a different journal — maybe I could call it editrixie or something. I'm going to focus on fanfic for these, because that's what we're here for, so examples mostly come from fandom if I can think of them.
Anyways. English, because it is bizarre, has some very mixed up rules, and the apostrophe to indicate possession is one that always causes confusion (and madness — if you want, I can tell you a storyalexfandra once told me about a co-worker of hers who ended up under psychiatric observation because she went nuts trying to fix signs that misused the apostrophe). To start with, we have pronouns (words that stand in for proper nouns and names), which, if we want to show possession, never take an apostrophe in front of the s: yours, ours, hers, his, theirs, its (of course, this shouldn’t be confused with it’s, meaning it is. That one trips up so many people, but a basic rule is: if it belongs to something, then use its, if you’re saying it is, use it’s). Stick an apostrophe in front of the s, like your’s, and everyone writes you off as a doofus. All this seems logical until you get into the next part, which is that all other words, when you want to show possession, take an apostrophe and an s (except, of course, the ones that don’t). So, like, no wonder people are confused — it’s frickin’ confusing!
Basically, any time you want to show possession by someone or something, you’ve got this: The witch’s spell, the vid’s use of clips, Buffy's stake, the fic’s plot, the immortal’s sword, Vin’s rifle... and so on and so forth. You can say to yourself, okay, so if it’s a pronoun, then there’s no apostrophe s, but if it’s a real noun or a name, then yay! apostrophe s. (And that thing someone told you once that objects can’t possess anything, so you can’t say “the table’s legs were crooked”? It’s crap, so ignore it.)
But wait! There’s more! Just to make it more confusing to the average Jane, we get the problem of those pesky names ending in s, and the plurals, which also end in s, so then what do we do? Well, in American English (AE), we screw it up, in British English and most standard English-speaking publishing style conventions, we make it seem deceptively simple, but there’s confusion still reigning.
In the rest of the English-speaking world, a name ending in s gets the apostrophe s — so you’ve got Giles’s car, Methos's apartment, Chris’s horse. (Frenchie guys do too, especially because the s is silent -- Roy Dupuis's hair, DeCartes's writing.) Many style guides make an exception for historical or religious names — Moses’ tablets, Jesus’ crucifixion — apparently because somehow the double ess sound is... I dunno. Not cool for historical or religious figures? Who knows. A lot of people don’t subscribe to this special treatment; I’m one of them. Maybe I’m too much of a heathen to care. But a gajillion years ago, newspapers and other periodicals in America adopted a convention of leaving off the ‘s for names ending in s, as part of their space-saving efforts (also omitted the serial comma and other things, if you've ever seen an old paper, you know how crammed they were). It’s now standard Associated Press style, and used by many periodicals such as Time, daily newspapers, and so on. Publishers of books and journals and suchlike didn’t really adopt this stylistic rule, though it’s really an individual thing. But here’s the weird part — I’ve been researching this for a while, trying to find out where along the line this periodical stylistic convention started being taught as a “correct” grammar rule in American schools, and I can’t find it. I’m still really curious about it, because it seems so weird to me that out of all the English-speaking countries, we adopted a rule and teach it as correct, which was developed entirely for specific other needs. It’s now taught as right in schools from elementary/primary on up to university level.
So now, most of my work involves fixing this, because most style guides I use require the possessive s for names and words ending in s. I have to explain to people of my generation and below that if they check a grammar handbook or publisher’s style guide, they’ll find my change supported, and they are always surprised — as I was when I found out that what I’d been taught wasn’t necessarily “correct.” And it creeps up in the weirdest places: I laughed my ass off when twice on Buffy, I could tell that the script had been written Giles’ — because the actors read the lines like that. They didn’t say Gilezes, which is how it comes out in speech, they made a hard stop after the first s, because clearly it had been written that way in the script, and that’s what they thought they should say. Most of us just don’t really talk that way. We say Gilezes car or Chrisses gun, so why, in AE, we’re being taught in school to write it differently, I do not know. I would love to find out the history on this. It’s sort of like the metric system, I guess — we just have to do it different in America, even if we look like dorks.
And then... the whole thing gets weirder. The dreaded plural possessive and apostrophe — but this one’s actually a bit easier, I think, once you get past those first two problems I discussed. Mostly? You do the ’ thing and leave it at that if you’re dealing with plurals — the witches’ conference commences at midnight, the editors’ group got rowdy with their red pens, the Mounties’ union voted Fraser out. There are lots of potential pitfalls and some strange little sub-rules around these I won't bore you with, but most of the time you’re pretty safe with the apostrophe after that plural s and nothing else. Yeah, you can get kinda freaky, like say, you have a bunch of Mulder clones (Mulders), and you’re trying to indicate that a group of them possessed some guns, but why torture yourself? Write the hell around it — the guns used by the Mulders were found in the sewer. You get the drift. Same goes for plurals like families — we visted the Scullys’ house and they all came for dinner (though you’d go to Dana Scully’s apartment), but the Gileses invited us to their house to meet their son, Rupert, and his fiancée, the Calendars’ daughter, Jenny. Seriously — when in doubt, look it up. Go to www.bartleby.com if you don’t have a decent basic book on language, and use their resources. Your readers will thank you for it.
Oh, and a strange little side note: the possessive of who isn’t who’s. The word you’re looking for is whose: Duncan asked, “Whose book is this?” and Amanda replied, “I think it’s Methos's.”
Like I said, English is a freaky language. And this one thing, especially in AE, really trips people up. When I get the chance to beta fiction, I always point this weird s’ or s’s issue to people, and let them make up their own mind about whether they want to use the method most of the world uses, or use the one they were mostly likely taught in school and are familiar with. But one thing I do want to point out — whichever way you choose, be consistent. Don’t randomly throw in Wes’ and then a few paragraphs later, use Wes’s. Keep your eyes peeled if you’re writing or beta-ing.
And I thought
tiashome might have had a good point about making this language/writing thingie a different LJ or community even — if people think they’d prefer I take this elsewhere, let me know. God knows I have enough codes for a different journal — maybe I could call it editrixie or something. I'm going to focus on fanfic for these, because that's what we're here for, so examples mostly come from fandom if I can think of them.Anyways. English, because it is bizarre, has some very mixed up rules, and the apostrophe to indicate possession is one that always causes confusion (and madness — if you want, I can tell you a story
alexfandra once told me about a co-worker of hers who ended up under psychiatric observation because she went nuts trying to fix signs that misused the apostrophe). To start with, we have pronouns (words that stand in for proper nouns and names), which, if we want to show possession, never take an apostrophe in front of the s: yours, ours, hers, his, theirs, its (of course, this shouldn’t be confused with it’s, meaning it is. That one trips up so many people, but a basic rule is: if it belongs to something, then use its, if you’re saying it is, use it’s). Stick an apostrophe in front of the s, like your’s, and everyone writes you off as a doofus. All this seems logical until you get into the next part, which is that all other words, when you want to show possession, take an apostrophe and an s (except, of course, the ones that don’t). So, like, no wonder people are confused — it’s frickin’ confusing!Basically, any time you want to show possession by someone or something, you’ve got this: The witch’s spell, the vid’s use of clips, Buffy's stake, the fic’s plot, the immortal’s sword, Vin’s rifle... and so on and so forth. You can say to yourself, okay, so if it’s a pronoun, then there’s no apostrophe s, but if it’s a real noun or a name, then yay! apostrophe s. (And that thing someone told you once that objects can’t possess anything, so you can’t say “the table’s legs were crooked”? It’s crap, so ignore it.)
But wait! There’s more! Just to make it more confusing to the average Jane, we get the problem of those pesky names ending in s, and the plurals, which also end in s, so then what do we do? Well, in American English (AE), we screw it up, in British English and most standard English-speaking publishing style conventions, we make it seem deceptively simple, but there’s confusion still reigning.
In the rest of the English-speaking world, a name ending in s gets the apostrophe s — so you’ve got Giles’s car, Methos's apartment, Chris’s horse. (Frenchie guys do too, especially because the s is silent -- Roy Dupuis's hair, DeCartes's writing.) Many style guides make an exception for historical or religious names — Moses’ tablets, Jesus’ crucifixion — apparently because somehow the double ess sound is... I dunno. Not cool for historical or religious figures? Who knows. A lot of people don’t subscribe to this special treatment; I’m one of them. Maybe I’m too much of a heathen to care. But a gajillion years ago, newspapers and other periodicals in America adopted a convention of leaving off the ‘s for names ending in s, as part of their space-saving efforts (also omitted the serial comma and other things, if you've ever seen an old paper, you know how crammed they were). It’s now standard Associated Press style, and used by many periodicals such as Time, daily newspapers, and so on. Publishers of books and journals and suchlike didn’t really adopt this stylistic rule, though it’s really an individual thing. But here’s the weird part — I’ve been researching this for a while, trying to find out where along the line this periodical stylistic convention started being taught as a “correct” grammar rule in American schools, and I can’t find it. I’m still really curious about it, because it seems so weird to me that out of all the English-speaking countries, we adopted a rule and teach it as correct, which was developed entirely for specific other needs. It’s now taught as right in schools from elementary/primary on up to university level.
So now, most of my work involves fixing this, because most style guides I use require the possessive s for names and words ending in s. I have to explain to people of my generation and below that if they check a grammar handbook or publisher’s style guide, they’ll find my change supported, and they are always surprised — as I was when I found out that what I’d been taught wasn’t necessarily “correct.” And it creeps up in the weirdest places: I laughed my ass off when twice on Buffy, I could tell that the script had been written Giles’ — because the actors read the lines like that. They didn’t say Gilezes, which is how it comes out in speech, they made a hard stop after the first s, because clearly it had been written that way in the script, and that’s what they thought they should say. Most of us just don’t really talk that way. We say Gilezes car or Chrisses gun, so why, in AE, we’re being taught in school to write it differently, I do not know. I would love to find out the history on this. It’s sort of like the metric system, I guess — we just have to do it different in America, even if we look like dorks.
And then... the whole thing gets weirder. The dreaded plural possessive and apostrophe — but this one’s actually a bit easier, I think, once you get past those first two problems I discussed. Mostly? You do the ’ thing and leave it at that if you’re dealing with plurals — the witches’ conference commences at midnight, the editors’ group got rowdy with their red pens, the Mounties’ union voted Fraser out. There are lots of potential pitfalls and some strange little sub-rules around these I won't bore you with, but most of the time you’re pretty safe with the apostrophe after that plural s and nothing else. Yeah, you can get kinda freaky, like say, you have a bunch of Mulder clones (Mulders), and you’re trying to indicate that a group of them possessed some guns, but why torture yourself? Write the hell around it — the guns used by the Mulders were found in the sewer. You get the drift. Same goes for plurals like families — we visted the Scullys’ house and they all came for dinner (though you’d go to Dana Scully’s apartment), but the Gileses invited us to their house to meet their son, Rupert, and his fiancée, the Calendars’ daughter, Jenny. Seriously — when in doubt, look it up. Go to www.bartleby.com if you don’t have a decent basic book on language, and use their resources. Your readers will thank you for it.
Oh, and a strange little side note: the possessive of who isn’t who’s. The word you’re looking for is whose: Duncan asked, “Whose book is this?” and Amanda replied, “I think it’s Methos's.”
Like I said, English is a freaky language. And this one thing, especially in AE, really trips people up. When I get the chance to beta fiction, I always point this weird s’ or s’s issue to people, and let them make up their own mind about whether they want to use the method most of the world uses, or use the one they were mostly likely taught in school and are familiar with. But one thing I do want to point out — whichever way you choose, be consistent. Don’t randomly throw in Wes’ and then a few paragraphs later, use Wes’s. Keep your eyes peeled if you’re writing or beta-ing.
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Re: Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Date: 2003-11-14 08:15 pm (UTC)