A WORD, PLEASE:Agnes’ rules aren’t like the boss’s

It sure seemed like a reasonable question, but little did she know there was no hope of a reasonable answer.

“Is it Agnes’ or Agnes’s?” a user on the Writers.net message board wanted to know.

In the world of grammar, punctuation and style, people ask questions like this all the time. Is there a comma before the “and” in a list? Does punctuation go inside or outside the quotation marks? Is it true you can’t use “nauseous” to describe feeling ill?

And the questioners all have the same problem: They all assume that out there, somewhere, is a clear answer.

There isn’t. On the comma question, called the “Oxford” or “serial” comma, style guides are in dispute, with newspaper style dissenting from most by leaving out the extra comma. On the “nauseous” question, again, authorities dispute, though most now agree that “nauseous” is fine as a synonym for “nauseated.”

But the possessive question — well, as I posted on that message board and on my blog, this is the one that seems most likely to be possessed by the devil. I didn’t realize how bad the situation was until I typed, side-by-side, the three different style guides’ “correct” possessive forms of words that end in “s.” It looked like this:

“Chicago Manual of Style”: James’s words; James’ sake; James’s seat.

“Associated Press Stylebook”: James’ words; James’ sake; James’ seat; BUT the boss’s words; the boss’ sake; the boss’ seat.

Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”: James’s words; James’s sake; James’s seat; BUT Jesus’ words; Jesus’ sake; Jesus’ seat.

Of these forms, there’s not a single one — not one — that they all agree on. Which leads me to just one conclusion: Poor Agnes.

But making possessives out of words that end in “s” doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems. In fact, if you just follow a few simple guidelines, you can be 100% sure that you never look stupid.

Start by ditching Strunk and White. “The Elements of Style” is the main force behind the idea that “ancients” like Jesus follow different possessive rules. But newspapers don’t use this book as their official guide; book publishers don’t either. So you’d do better to focus on observed rules.

The two most-observed style guides, AP for newspapers and Chicago for books, also have some quirky rules. But they’re a lot more manageable than they appear at first glance. For example, AP has different rules for proper names ending in “s” and generic nouns ending in “s,” like “boss.” Proper names, they say, don’t take the extra s. It’s “James’ words” but the “boss’s orders.” Of course, there’s another exception. If, after something like “boss’s,” you have a word that starts with an s, like “station,” then you drop the extra “s” to keep it from looking like too many esses in a row: “the boss’ station.”

Chicago, naturally, disagrees. It makes no distinction between proper names and generic nouns. They all get the extra “s.” Chicago says, “James’s.” Nor does Chicago make exceptions whenever the following word begins with an “s.” Their exception applies to just one word: “sake.” So, according to Chicago, it’s “Jesus’s sandals” but “Jesus’ sake.”

After pages of special circumstances and exceptions, Chicago’s authors must finally realize how silly they sound, because they end up suggesting an “alternative practice”: Just always omit the extra “s.” And if you don’t like that, I have another alternative practice: Follow Chicago’s main advice by always adding the extra “s,” then don’t worry when you don’t know the exceptions because whoever is reading your writing doesn’t know either.