(Here is a link to my Possessive S rule)

Steve’s Students’ Style Rule Essay

Most writers and readers have at least one grammatical “pet peeve,” some minor rule which rarely gets in the way of communicating but which is still irritating. I’m not sure we can ever know the pet peeves of the authors of the classic writing style book The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. But if I had to guess, I would say that at least one of their pet peeves was the rule regarding possessive S.

In this short essay, I’d like to offer my own take on this rule of possessive “s.” If you want to make a suggestion in the text, why not do something like change the color, like I'm doing here? First, I will introduce and explain my interpretation of this rule; then I will offer an explanation of this rule and its significance-- or really, its lack of significance.

Possessive S
This is my interpretation of the “possessive S” rule, which I published on the “English 328 Style Rules Wiki:”

Most of the time, you should indicate possession by adding apostrophe s to the noun:
* Steve’s essay
* the dog’s toy
* Education’s ideals

If the noun ends with an “s,” you can either add a apostrophe s or just an apostrophe:
* Charles’ bed or Charles’s bed
* Mr. Adams’ family or Mr. Adams’s family
Be consistent: don’t switch between “Charles’” and “Charles’s” within the same text.

To form possessives of plural nouns, add an apostrophe after the “s:”
Students’ essay
Doctors’ office
“Student’s essay” indicates that one student has possession of the essay; “Students’ essay” indicates that more than one student possess the essay.

It’s is a contraction of “it is,” while “its” is actually the possessive of “it.” So, for example:
* The dog napped next to it’s chew toy.
This sentence should be:
* The dog napped next to its chew toy.

Where did this rule come from?
Readers familiar with Strunk’s and White’s Elements of Style will notice that my interpretation of the possessive S rule is different from theirs. Based on William Strunk’s 1919 self-published style guide (xiii), The Elements of Style is a surprisingly short book, only about 100 pages long, printed in a large font on small pages. Yet in those few pages, Strunk and White offer dozens of rules to help writers write clearly. The tone of many of these rules is forceful to the point of being dictatorial. As White wrote in the introduction for the 1979 edition of the book, “The reader will soon discover that these rules and principles are in the form of sharp commands, Sergeant Strunk snapping orders to his platoon” (xiv). These “commands” frequently have the effect of convincing the reader that the rule being offered is the one and only possible explanation of how to (or how not to) write, even when there clearly are other interpretations.

Strunk’s and White’s version of the rule for possessive S is a good example of the book’s forcefulness. In their book, possessive S is always formed by adding apostrophe s, regardless of the final consonant. For example, “Charles’ bed” is wrong; it should always be “Charles’s bed.” The only exceptions allowed by Strunk and White “are the possessives of ancient proper names ending in -es and -is, the possessive for Jesus’, and such forms as for conscience’ sake, for righteousness’ sake”(1). Besides Jesus, Strunk and White also allow for only an apostrophe to show possession for Moses and Isis.

The problem with this forcefulness is that, despite Strunk’s and White’s conviction about their version of the rule for possessive S, their rule is clearly not always right. In fact, my rule for possessive S for a word ending in S-- that the writer has the choice to either as an apostrophe S or just an apostrophe-- is based on the way I have seen this written in many of the things that I’ve read, and it’s based on the way I remember being taught this rule as a child. So unless everyone else is simply “wrong,” Strunk and White’s rule is not always “right.”

So, why do Strunk and White seem so adamant about this rule? As I suggested in the beginning of this essay, we can only speculate, but I think Joseph Williams’ book Style: Toward Clarity and Grace offers an interesting discussion about the origins of these sorts of “pet peeves.” In many ways, Williams’ book about style and writing is the opposite of Strunk and White. While Strunk and White offer cut-and-dry rules with little discussion, Williams goes to extreme lengths to provide writers options and explanations. This is the goal of the book; as Williams writes in the opening chapter, “Telling me to ‘Be Clear’ is like telling me to ‘Hit the ball squarely.’ I know that. What I don’t know is how to do it. To explain how to write clearly, I have to go beyond platitudes” (1).

Williams never discusses the rules for possessive S specifically, but he does discuss grammar rules and their origins in Chapter 10, “Usage.” As is the case throughout the book, Williams does not give his readers definitive rules. In fact, he suggests that it comes to matters of grammar that, “we might generally agree on what counts as clear and why clarity is important, [but] not all of us will agree on what counts as correct” (171). Williams provides ample explanation as to why this is the case, including a brief history of “Good English,” and then he explains that there are three kinds of grammar rules. First, there are “rules [that] characterize the basic structure of English” (176), which are rules that anyone who is a native speaker of a language would automatically know. Second, there are rules that mark “standard” English. According to Williams, “The only writers and speakers who worry about these rules are those upwardly mobile types who are striving to join the educated class of writers and speakers” (176).

Third and most important for my purposes here, there are rules that “some grammarians try to impose on those who already write educated standard English” (176), rules that Williams later in the chapter describes as “Folklore,” “Optional Rules,” and “Bete Noires.” I think that Strunk and White’s rule regarding possessive S might fall into this last category since Williams suggests that Bete Noires rules are ones that aren’t rational but that still excite “intense feeling.” As Williams says, “None of these ‘errors’ interferes with clarity and concision; indeed, some of them let us save a word or two. But for some reason, they arouse such intense ire in some editors, teachers, and ordinary citizens that every writer should be aware of their special status” (190). In short, some rules, while not very important in the grand scheme of things, become intensely important for individual writers and readers for no clear and logical reason-- in other words, pet peeves.

Certainly, possessive S is a grammar rule that writers should master, and I would argue that my version of the rule is both more clear than the rule described in Strunk and White and more accurate in the sense of how possessive S is actually practiced by most writers. I also think that my rule would not be counted by Williams as a “Bete Noires” rule because it provides flexibility to the writer.

However, my rule regarding possessive S is probably not that significant in the grand scheme of things. It certainly is not that important if our goal is to write well and communicate with an audience. As Williams writes near the end of his book, “We want to be grammatically correct. But if we include in our definition of correct both what is true and what is folklore, we risk missing what is important-- that which makes prose turgid or concise, confusing or clear” (196). Strunk and White might be “correct” when they advice constructions like “Charles’s bed;” I might be “correct” when I suggest that “Charles’ bed” is just as good. But there are many things more important in clear and elegant prose than satisfying a potential reader’s pet peeve.

Works Cited:

White, E.B. and William Strunk. The Elements of Style. New York: Longman, 2000.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995
You seem to be very possessive of your possessives. Did you exceed the 1200 to 1500 amount JK.