The Harris-Walz campaign is confusing grammar nerds everywhere

[sl8]

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/18/nx-s1-5075211/the-harris-walz-campaign-is-confusing-grammar-nerds-everywhere

3 min. audio, transcript, at link. (part of the discussion is how the words sound, which doesn't come across very well in the transcript)

Also, "... then all of humanity could partake in the enjoyment of forming possessives simply and purely, and it would be much better."

The Harris-Walz campaign is confusing grammar nerds everywhere

AUGUST 18, 2024 8:18 AM ET
HEARD ON WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY
David Folkenflik

What's the rule for making a name ending in 's' possessive, or plural possessive? NPR's David Folkenflik talks with grammarian Ellen Jovin, who's watched the confusion over the Harris-Walz ticket.

[...]

JOVIN: OK, well, what I want everyone to do - thank you for this opportunity, by the way - is to just add on the singular possessive - just stick an apostrophe-S on it, and stop all the other nonsense that's going on.

FOLKENFLIK: So for Walz, pretty much everybody is putting the apostrophe-S after his name. But for Vice President Harris, the AP, as I understand it - NPR also - makes her possessive by simply having an apostrophe and nothing else. How is it that some organizations, including my own wayward one, choose to go a different way from your suggested rule?

JOVIN: Are you asking me about the why of this? - because the y is part of my problem with it. I don't like it because you actually pronounce that extra syllable, and I think you might as well reflect it in the writing. People don't say Harris family. They say Harris' family. So just like Walz, you might as well add the apostrophe-S. That is my argument.

[...]

[Doc Sportello]

1. Difference between AP style and Chicago Manual of Style

Last edited Mon Aug 19, 2024, 08:27 AM - Edit history (1)

https://www.prnewsonline.com/chicago-versus-ap-style#:~:text=Possessive%20Apostrophes&text=For%20singular%20common%20nouns%20that,styles%20use%20just%20an%20apostrophe.


I worked as a journalist (which uses AP style) and at a university (used Chicago style). It is confusing.

[Igel]

2. Not confused.

A question of stylistic choice and register.

Words ending in /s/ have had the colloquial/educated informal spoken possessive /es/ for many a decade. In my mid-60s, it was normal when I was in grade school even in my dialect's markedly syntactically conservative working class speech. (The many/much distinction was absolute, and even when drunk kids failing English would invariable match Dickens for the use of the English subjunctive. Still can't parse "it's important that he's at the debate tomorrow" and fight to accept it means "it's important that he be at the debate tomorrow." One's fact, one indicates something that evinces doubt as to occurrence and is maybe counterfactual. At 5 I had the subjective mastered.)

The more formal and literary standard hearkens back to long before my birth and just says that the ending of the genitive in English is /s/. It's attested in Chaucer and before, Mallory and after. "Lewis'" where the only indicator of genitive was the pointless and silent marker '--and even that marker is of fairly recent coinage. "John" and "Johns" were unremarkable for hundreds of years of printing.

How conservative your written style is probably matches whether you like open or close punctuation, I'd guess.