Possessives of Nouns Ending in S

Most people regularly write stuff like “We went to James’s house” without stopping to think whether it should be “James’ house.”

In many areas of life, such cavalier carelessness is a bad idea. But in this case, not thinking is actually better than thinking. That’s because possessives, and especially possessives of singular words that end in S, can drive you nuts if you think about them. Most people are sure that there can be only one right way to make James possessive. But in fact the rules are a mess, the language referees disagree, and on any given day you might see James’ in a newspaper and James’s in a book.

Here, according to some of the best-known language guides, are examples of correctly formed possessives of singular proper names ending in S.

 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 & White's The Elements of Style*
James's words

James's sake

James's seat

BUT

Jesus' words

Jesus' sake

Jesus' seat

 I should note here that the Elements of Style is not an official style guide, nor do experts consider it a real language authority. But millions of people who own the book don’t know that. So it adds to the conflicting advice floating around out there.

What should you do? Pick a style -- either the “book style” of writing James’s or the “newspaper” style of writing James’ and just use that form consistently. Those funky special circumstances you see above – stuff like “boss’s word” vs. “boss’ sake” and “Jesus’ followers” -- no one expects you memorize all those. If you really need your writing to be bullet proof, you could consult a copy of AP or Chicago. But otherwise, just pick James’s or James’ and use it consistently.

Tags: apostrophe, GRAMMAR, possessives

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