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

a comma followed by a possessive apostrophe

If a city and state (and full date) start a sentence in possessive form, would you consider the punctuation correct in the following three examples?

  • Frankfort, Kentucky’s crime rate has increased.
  • Paris, France’s breathtaking sights left us in a state of raptures.
  • September 11, 2001’s tragic events will forever be indelibly etched in the minds of everyone.

Please, no recasts. 

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Comments

I think this is a stylistic difference. I don't think you'd find anyone decisively saying it's grammatically correct or incorrect. The more common conundrums are with name suffixes, like PhD and Jr. "John Doe, PhD's résumé is impressive," looks quite awkward. "Jr." is even more awkward because it has a period.

The Chicago Manual of Style says "when a word ends in an apostrophe, no period or comma should intervene between the word and the apostrophe."

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Punctuation/faq0018.html

But conveniently, they don't suggest a solution...

Dyske May-08-2018

3 votes   Permalink   Report Abuse

I think that the best thing you can do it those kinds of situations is try to rephrase the sentence in order to not make it look so awkward.
Generally speaking, those examples you have look correct-ish but it's debatable.

Areitoyaya Jun-05-2018

3 votes   Permalink   Report Abuse

In those kinds of awkward situations, the best thing you can do is try rephrasing what you said to make it sound less weird. Rewording it can help smooth things over.

astralkavinnie Jan-18-2024

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