A note on apostrophes in the possessive

Everyone knows how to create the possessive using the apostrophe, right?

If the apple belongs to John, it's John's apple. If the apples belong to the teachers, they are the teachers' apples. When the possessor is singular, the possessive is created by adding an apostrophe then an S, but if it is plural, the apostrophe is added after the pluralizing S. Simple, easy, everyone knows that. "What do you think we are, Sugar Kat?" I can hear you saying to your monitor. "Retarded? 'Cause we're not."

I know you're not "retarded," Dear Reader. However, I have a question for you. How does one create the possessive using an apostrophe when the possessor is singular but ends in an S? How does one write the apple of Mr. Thompkins using the possessive apostrophe?

National magazines and highly-respected newspapers are getting the answer to that question wrong, which is why I feel compelled to write this.

A lot of people for whom English is their primary language would claim that one creates the possessive form with a singular, S-ending possessor the same way one would with a plural, by simply putting the apostrophe after the S. When told the apple belongs to Mr. Thompkins, they write "Mr. Thompkins' apple." They are wrong.

I know this because my mother's maiden name ends in an S and, in her day, kids were actually taught grammar in grammar school. (How I wish I was taught the elements in elementary school, but no, I had to wait until high school. Man, this country's backwards when it comes to when kids should be taught what.) She passed her knowledge of the use of the possessive apostrophe on to me. Now I pass it on the the English-speaking world at large, which has been pissing me off lately with its ignorance of the English language. (Grr!)

If you have a possessor which is singular yet ends in an S, you treat it as you would any other singular possessor, by adding the apostrophe and then the S. Therefore, if the apple belongs to Mr. Thompkins, it is Mr. Thompkins's apple.

So, Entertainment Weekly, if the mirror belonged to Sirius, it would not have been Sirius' mirror, unless you were somehow actually writing about a multiple of whatever the hell Siriu might be which happened to own the same mirror. No, what you should have written, or what your apparently very lax editor should have corrected it to when you made your error, you dim-witted hack, was Sirius's mirror. Sirius is not a multiple, but one character. And your entire magazine is staffed by English-language 'tards.

Proof
As for proof of this, please take out your copy of Strunk & White, The Elements of Style. In the fourth edition, the rules on possessive singular of nouns is on page 1. If you don't have a copy at hand, go and buy one. It really should be required reading for anyone who wishes to write in English. Also, it's inexpensive, so it's not like buying some other grammar and style books, which can put you back $20 to $40. However, if you're just looking for the rule, Bartleby to the rescue: They have posted William Strunk, Jr.'s original book upon which White expounded and expanded. The page you can find the illustration of the proper use of possessive apotrophes is here. Please note the first two samples end in S (Charles, Burns) and still have the apostrophe S to form the possessive.

So long, John

Like I mentioned in a previous post, it seems like my mom and I are the only two people in America who liked HBO's new David Milch series, John from Cincinnati, which just wrapped up its first ten-episode season this past Sunday. In fact, not only did we like it, but as the series went along, introducing bizarre, deeply imperfect yet increasingly endearing characters (more often than not played by former residents of the much-lamented Deadwood; we got to be rather eager for new characters in hopes that another former Deadwoodian would show), who spoke mono- and dialogues in an elevated and profanity-laced speech pattern reminiscent of the mesmerizing cadences of that Old West town (as if the residents of and visitors to IB were the decendents of the whores and criminals of Milch's other HBO creation), and presenting ideas which were neither clear nor explained and about which we theorized and expounded like graduate students in a course on Albee plays, we really got to loving it. Also, best opening credits song, period, since The Sopranos first aired in January, 1999. John from Cincinnati is strange and weird and nonlinear, which are all things which throw off most boob tube viewers, who would rather watch unchallenging televised mental diarrhea like Big Brother 8 (why, Lord, why? ::eyes bleed::), but which my mom and I eat up like chocolate-covered hand-made ice cream.

Now I find out Mom and I may very well have been the only people who liked the show who weren't actually involved in shooting it, as HBO has cancelled the series, not renewing for a second season of an hour-long show for the first time in its original programming history.

For fuck's sake, HBO, you gave that piece of shit Arli$$ seemingly innumerable and unending seasons. Why stop John when it's hitting its weird-ass stride?

Why? Because they are jerks and television critics are jerks and America is just too fucking stupid. I hate you, World.

We'll miss you, John.

...

When I saw this on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I actually became physically ill. Bile, headache, etc. I have difficulty finding words to describe my speechless, drop-jawed...horror? Anger? Dismay? Frustration? Horangedistration? Gobsmacked would be a good word, except that I don't think it's negative enough.

All right, here's a story of pure fiction that might illustrate my indescribable feelings at the moment I watched this. Imagine you're at the display of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence looking at the two foundation documents of our nation with other American tourists, foreign tourists, and wounded American veterans visiting from the VA hospital. VP Cheney strides in, has Secret Service smash open both cases, then takes out both documents, tears them to hand-sized pieces, wipes his poop-covered arse with the pieces, shoves these poo-papers in the mouths of the wounded vets, knocks the vets out of their wheelchairs and off of their crutches to the floor, then has Secret Service kick the vets in the face. Not that Cheney'd actually, physically do that. I can't imagine anyone would actually be that horrible. But if he did and I were standing there, watching it, unable to stop any of it from happening, that feeling I'd have during the whole thing might kind of equal how I felt when I watched this. Except in the hypothetical and completely fictional case, I might actually vomit instead of just feeling like I might, sob with despair, go home, write a suicide note, then jump off a bridge.

Protest? Try to stop it? Why? No one listens. No one cares. Especially not the executive branch. They're like the phone company in the old SNL sketches in the 1970s: "We don't care; we don't have to: We're the executive branch."

No one cares. Except for a frustrated, angry, and deeply saddened Jon Stewart. But all he can do is make a funny TV show while New Rome burns.

Woe is we.

I ♥ Americayet another regionalist rant by ltsk

BBC | Americas | Washington diary: Land of ideas

The US is a nation built not on ethnicity, not on religion, not even on history but on an idea.

Remembering the fires and riots in the suburbs of Paris (and other European cities) nearly two years ago and thinking about the anger French President Sarkozy raises in some in France, I've been thinking about what's wrong with France (as a break from fretting over my motherland). It occured to me that the French need to change what it is to be French, as to the Germans what it is to be German, etc., etc. Frenchness can't just be an inbred set of genetic codes. Otherwise, there will always be people rioting in the streets.

"The poor will always be with you," so there's no need to add to the ranks of the disenfranchised be marking an entire portion of the country not of that country simply by virtue of their not having the "correct" genetic makeup. It's stupid and, honestly, just a continuation of the failed policy of colonization. Yes, yes, America is the Great Imperialist, even according to many here at home, but, honestly, we can't hold a candle to the awfulness of, say, Britian's colonial rule of the China, or what France did in Algeria. America is the child of Europe. We learned well, as you can see in some of our behavior in Iraq. But we, at least, are willing to say that someone from Iraq who becomes an American citizen is American, as are his children. Can't say the same of the French and Algerian immigrants.

The quote above, by a BBC reporter, a Brit, mind, and not some flag-waving FOX News toadie, is exactly what makes the US a country which, while deeply, deeply troubled, I believe will survive and flourish in the long run: This is a nation built upon ideas. Not on "whiteness" (in spite of what Lou Dobbs may think), not the Bible (in spite of what the Christian Right might think), but ideas: Ideas of human rights and equality, freedom and responsibility, potential and work.

The trouble is, the folks in charge right now--in the government, in business, the social leaders, too--don't understand that. Hopefully, we can change this. As Bill Clinton once said, and as Mr. Frei quotes in the linked article, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America," so long as we remember what the US is really about and remember to fight for our ideas. Our ideals. Our great potential. Honestly, this is what makes us the greatest country in the world: We have potential that no other country has, because they are limited by their self-definitions, while we are a country based of the best ideals of humanity. Anyone who truly swears by these ideals, who carries them in their heart and mind, who is willing to die for them and, better yet, live by them, can call themselves American.

This is why I consider the Bush Government, the Christian Right, the Neocon movement, and many on the extreme right and left to be unAmerican: They do not live to or hold by the ideas which make the US the US, the ideas without which there would be no America. Their selfishness, their inability to see beyond their own agendas, their need to be right no matter what, cause them to act, at least, like they hate America. As a red-blooded American, I often find myself hating them for it.

I was going to forward this rant to my sister who lives in France, thinking she might be able to use this argument, or at least portions of it, the next time an in-law who's never been here mentions What Is Wrong With America. I decided against it, however, as I don't know if she can handle the thought of her little sister, at heart, being so pro-America.

Not pro current American foreign policy or even pro most of the national policies, but definitely, when you cut to the quick, to the core of what America is, yes, I'm a patriot. "American patriot," unfortunately, has been linked by both supporters of the current administration and some of their detractors with being pro-Bush. Why is it I can't be a patriotic American without being a supporter of policies which go directly against the ideas upon which America was founded? Must it not be the opposite? Must not those who would support leaders, national and local, whose policies are directly opposed to the ideas upon which our country was created and by which it is held together, be the unpatriotic ones?

I adore France, but it's deeply flawed. America is flawed, but I love it. Glass houses, anti-America Europeans. And, while America can learn a lot from the French medical system and the French abilities to talk about sex without having a hernia and drink alcohol in reasonable amounts and without the need to get piss-drunk, the French could learn from America about accepting those not like yourself and calling them fellow countrymen. Even and especially those with heavy accents.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Remember those France? You have national ideals, too. Do they only apply to the genetically French? Yes, America still has problems accepting whoever has been deemed the Other, but don't pretend you don't have problems like, and possibly worse than, ours.