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What is the correct possessive for nouns ending in s?
When did it become correct to add an 's' to a singular possessive already ending in 's'?
I just bought The Elements of Style, an awesome little book. However, in the first section, the authors promote the use of 's, no matter what the last letter of a word is, to show possessiveness.
Some examples they use:
- Charles's friend
- Burns's poems
Are these grammatically correct?
It's down to personal preference -- but the modern convention, in my opinion, is to omit the final s. I'd always advocate omitting the final s because it's simply unnecessary: the apostrophe, by itself, clearly denotes possession. Whether or not American English adopts this is another matter...
But with British usage, it can often be quite erratic and anachronistic. A typical example is when I get on the London underground every day (the Piccadilly line going eastwards). One stop is called Baron's Court and its immediate neighbour is Earls Court.
You also get this with particular brands who choose to omit the apostrophe for clarity (like Twinings, and Waterstone's has announced it's dropping its apostrophe soon). So, in modern usage, the general trend is to omit the apostrophe. Another convention I've worked a lot with (MHRA's -- which I only use in academic essays) chooses to use the additional s for singular possession, and omit it for plural possession; so, for example: the boss’s daughter and the bosses’ daughters.
To answer Henry's point, there is no debate over 'St' and 'St.'. Because St James' Park refers to Saint James, the use of St is a contraction. You put a full-stop after an abbreviation (like Prof.), but you never put a full-stop after a contraction because the final letter of the abbreviated form is the same as the final letter of the full form (which is why you see Mr, St, Mrs, etc.)
The rule is very simple, and it has no exceptions: that you add an s if you say the s, which is almost always.
That said, because we don’t say the extra s when speaking certain limited phrases like these following examples, they therefore necessarily take no added s in spelling:
(Explanation: If the word ends in unstressed /iːz/, it is invariant in the face of any /ɨz/ inflection, whether for plural or possessive forms. There are very few of these, very nearly all of which are proper nouns from Greek or sometimes Latin. The other case above is the formulaic “for ___ sake”, which has a fossilized omission in speech.)
Most speakers, however, do always say the /ɨz/ form for the possessive in all these, so they all do add a final s in writing, to show that we sake it in speech:
It’s important to remember that the apostrophe represents no sound whatsoever, so if you say an extra sound, you have to use an extra letter. There is no exception to this rule; it’s not as though in certain words the apostrophe suddenly stands for the /ɨz/ sound. That’s the mistake people make. If you need the sound, then you need the letter, which is s.
Those examples are fine in my opinion, though preferences vary. A classic example in England is
And then there is the debate over St and St..
As an American English teacher I teach students not to use s's.
Strunk and White provide interesting and useful hints, but be careful as it's almost 100 years old and doesn't keep up with a lot of modern usage.
Your question requires a two-part answer. You want to know if it is still the case that “Charles’s” is grammatically correct, as prescribed by Strunk and White over fifty years ago.
It is the case that “Charles’s” is still grammatically correct, because writing reflects speech and most native speakers still pronounce the s twice.
That is not to say that “Charles’ ” is ungrammatical: it simply reflects a choice to pronounce the s once. And it was not ungrammatical fifty years ago, either. The Elements Of Style has never been a useful book. It is merely a popular one:
The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it. … Strunk had very little analytical understanding of syntax, White even less. Certainly White was a fine writer, but he was not qualified as a grammarian. (Geoffrey K. Pullum. “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice”, The Chronicle Review, April 17, 2009. Retrieved July 12, 2013.)
