A WORD, PLEASE:

My car gets 41 miles per gallon on the highway and 32 in the city. No kidding. I’m not just taking that little window sticker’s word for it. After I got the car, I verified it. I got 41 mpg driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on a trip that includes some steep uphill climbing, and I got that mileage with (get this) the air conditioning on much of the way.

So when I received a chain e-mail recently suggesting we consumers raise Cain about high gas prices, I couldn’t help but consider the source. The sender drives a big, fancy-looking SUV. One of the recipients on the e-mail list, I happen to know, drives an even bigger, fancier SUV. Neither would be caught dead driving my car — a 2006 Toyota Corolla with manual transmission.

I bought the car because it was economical. (Not only is the transmission manual, the door locks and windows are, too.) I did not buy it so I could later gloat to my SUV-driving friends about mileage while simultaneously working in little jabs about how rude it is to drive a tall vehicle that dangerously obstructs my view of traffic. That’s just a bonus.

So it is with sympathy that I dedicate this column on plurals and possessives to my friend who commutes to work all by herself in a car big enough to carry eight people and tall enough to block from view all road hazards in front of her.

A Google search for the terms SUVs and SUV’s shows that a lot of people still don’t know that an apostrophe is not used to form the plural of an initialism like SUV. Yes, you need the apostrophe to form the possessive, “My SUV’s mileage is shameful,” or to form a contraction with “is”: “My SUV’s for sale — cheap.” Rules also allow apostrophes when necessary to avoid confusion, for example, when writing in all caps: “SUV’S ARE ON SALE HERE.”

If I were queen of the world, one of the first things I’d do (besides making it illegal for an SUV to get in front of me on the freeway), would be to fix the English rules that use the letter S for two different jobs — one being to form possessives, the other being to form plurals.

This system causes a ridiculous amount of confusion. Cars, car’s, cars’ are all the result of a rule system that relies too heavily on S. Add to that the S as a short form of “is” in contractions, and we have quite a messy system on our hands.

Worse yet, a lot of words end with S: “My boss’s car is too big, just like all bosses’ cars when they’re trying to keep up with the Joneses and covet the Joneses’ possessions.”

The trick is: Don’t panic. Consider your word step by step. To make a plural possessive, first start with the most basic form of your word, whether it ends in S like “boss,” or with another letter, as does “car.” Then make it plural: cars or bosses. If you’re not sure about the plural form, check the dictionary. Finally, tack on your possessive, remembering that most plural possessives take just an apostrophe with no extra S: the cars’ mileage, meaning the mileage of more than one car. Remember, this rule doesn’t apply to possessives that don’t end in S, such as “the children” in the children’s future.

By simply breaking it down, you’ll have no trouble using plural possessives in every instance from “SUV drivers’ folly” to “the econobox driver’s last laugh.”

?JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer and author of “Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies” and “Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs — Even If You’re Right.” She may be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.