A Word, Please: A traditional holiday primer on possessives
Every year as the holidays approach, I like to offer tips to help readers avoid embarrassing mistakes on those Christmas cards that some of us relics still like to send out.
Then, every year, as the holidays draw nearer, I’m reminded of just how little anyone listens to me. “Happy holidays from the Johnson’s,” “Merry Christmas from the Gonzales’” and eagerly anticipated get-togethers “at the Ricci’s house” are just a few of the flubs that endure despite my puny powers of persuasion.
So I hope no one will mind a redux. Here’s a quick guide to dealing with plurals, possessives and plural possessives of those proper names that prove so pesky this time of year.
To correctly form the plural or possessive of a proper name, you must first note whether it’s plural or possessive (or both). Then you simply apply some not-so-simple rules, most of which you already know.
One cat, two cats. One cat’s tail, two cats’ tails. These are the simple rules of plurals and possessives that most of us get right most of the time.
When one thing possesses something, you usually just add an apostrophe then an S at the end: cat’s tail. When two or more things possess something, you’ve already added an S to make it plural, so just add just the apostrophe: cats’ tails.
But that simple formula gets infuriatingly complicated the minute you need to work with a noun that ends in S or a vowel.
Take, for example, Mr. Jones. If you want to talk about him and his wife in the same breath — that is, in the plural — you’d add on not just a single S but an ES. For a name that already ends in ES, this repeat seems weird: the Joneses.
If you want to talk about the husband’s new tie — that is, to use a possessive of the singular — things get even weirder because there are two correct ways to make a possessive out of a singular word that ends in S.
Mr. Jones’ tie is how you’d see it in the style favored by news media. But it would be Mr. Jones’s in most book publishing. They’re both right. To form the possessive of a single noun ending in S, you can add an apostrophe plus S or just the apostrophe.
Is it any surprise we get confused?
Words that end in vowels like I and O, words that end in S-sound consonants like Z and X, and words that end in CH and SH sounds further confuse people because they look funny in the plural.
One Ricci, two Riccis. One Russo, two Russos. One Gomez, two Gomezes. One Nash, two Nashes.
But if you just remember that you never use an apostrophe to form a plural, the battle is halfway won. No matter how tempting it is to write about that great family the “Russo’s,” that’s not plural. The apostrophe is just for forming possessives. So they’re the Russos.
And once you see clearly that you should form your plurals without any apostrophes, then you can make those plurals possessive. I met two Riccis. I visited the Riccis’ house. See how we start with the plural then apply the rule for making plurals possessive — the rule that says simply to tack the apostrophe on the end? I met two Russos then I visited the Russos’ house. I met two Gomezes then I visited the Gomezes’ house.
Keeping it straight is the most important thing. So maybe hold off on the eggnog until you’re done licking the stamps.
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JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.