Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

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Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Posessive aspostrophes

I tend to use the posessive S when you would actually bother to sound out the extra letter. In my head I hear the posessive “Jones’s” as “Jons-zz”

I also had a cat named Socks. If his name were to be made posessive, I wouldn’t put the extra S sound, so it’d just be “Socks’ ”

This is a little punctuation quirk I’ve picked up over the years. I doubt I’m correct. What’s the proper rule on this?

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Right you are. You just add an apostrophe to the end of the word when it ends with S, I do believe.
I'm learning Danish now and there is a bigger problem there, that is in Danish possessive form of name is i.e. Robert + s; without apostrophe. So Danes have problem writing the possessive form of Rasmus which is the name of many of the Danes.

goossun Feb-16-2004

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When saying one of the s' words, you still pronounce the second "s", even if it isn't actually there. For example, "Socks' toy" would be pronounced "sock-siz" (which is basically your first example).

Punkin_Donuts Feb-26-2004

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I was always taught that one should use 's whenever the owner of the possession is singular. So "Socks" the cat would be the owner of Socks's toy.

In "modern usage" I've read that it's acceptable to omit the final s, although that still doesn't sit right with me!

Anthony2 Apr-06-2004

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I was always taught to write just the apostrophe after the S even if it is a singular word (e.g. James). So instead of James's radio, we have James' radio and as there is no S after the apostrophe, we don't pronounce this phantom S.

JBL Apr-07-2004

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Though it is considered ok to omit the final s, it is still not correct grammar to do so. Many college professors will reduce your grade for it.

anonymous4 Oct-10-2004

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I was taught that one shouldn't try to teach others if one doesn't know what one is talking about. Something that, I seem to remember, I actually taught myself so I s'pose I could be wrong.

Biffo Oct-15-2008

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