By HOLLY RAMER
No matter possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to choose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her operating mate, it in all probability wasn’t a need to inflame arguments about apostrophes. But it surely doesn’t take a lot to get grammar nerds fired up.
“The decrease the stakes, the larger the combat,” stated Ron Woloshun, a inventive director and digital marketer in California who jumped into the fray on social media lower than an hour after Harris chosen Walz final week to supply his take possessive correct nouns.
The Related Press Stylebook says “use solely an apostrophe” for singular correct names ending in S: Dickens’ novels, Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life. However not everybody agrees.
Debate about possessive correct names ending in S began quickly after President Joe Biden cleared the way in which for Harris to run final month. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s? However the number of Walz together with his sounds-like-an-s surname actually ramped it up, stated Benjamin Dreyer, the retired copy chief at Random Home and creator of “Dreyer’s English: An Completely Appropriate Information to Readability and Model.”
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Dreyer was inundated with questions inside minutes of the announcement, which got here whereas he was on the dentist.
“I used to be like, ’Alright, all people simply has to relax. I’ll be residence in a short while and I can get to my desk,” he stated.
Whereas there may be widespread settlement that Walz’s is right, confusion persists about Harris’ vs. Harris’s. Dreyer’s verdict? Add the ’s.
“To set the ’s is simply less complicated, after which you possibly can take your priceless mind cells and apply them to extra vital issues,” he stated.
Woloshun chimed in with the same opinion on the social platform X, the place apostrophes are being thrown round like hand grenades. “The rule is easy: In case you say the S, spell the S,” he argued.
That places them on the identical facet as The New York Occasions, The Washington Submit and The Wall Road Journal — and at odds with AP.
Whereas AP model has developed on many fronts over time, there aren’t any rapid plans to alter the steering on possessives, stated Amanda Barrett, AP’s vp for information requirements and inclusion.
“This can be a longstanding coverage for the AP. It has served us properly, and we’ve not seen any actual want to alter,” she stated. “We do know that the dialog is on the market and other people make completely different decisions on the subject of grammar, and that’s all positive. Everybody makes a selection that works greatest for them.”
Timothy Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth Faculty, stated that till the seventeenth or 18th century, the possessive of correct names ending in S — resembling Jesus or Moses — typically was merely the identify itself with no apostrophe or further S. Finally, the apostrophe was added (Jesus’ or Moses’) to indicate possession, although the pronunciation remained the identical.
“That turned form of the usual that I used to be taught and cling to, regardless that looking back, I don’t assume it’s a terrific normal,” he stated.
That’s as a result of linguists view writing as a illustration of speech, and speech has modified since then. Pulju stated he expects the ’s type to change into dominant ultimately. However for now, he — together with the Merriam-Webster dictionary — says both method is appropriate.
“So long as individuals are speaking efficiently, we are saying language is doing what it’s presupposed to be doing,” he stated. “In case you can learn it whichever method it’s written, then it looks like it’s working for individuals. They’re not getting confused about whose operating mate Tim Walz is.”
If she wins in November, Harris would change into the third U.S. president with a final identify ending in S and the primary since Rutherford B. Hayes, who was elected in 1876 — 130 years earlier than the founding of Twitter — and was spared the social media frenzy over apostrophes. Harris is the primary nominee with such a tough final identify since 1984, when Democrat Michael Dukakis misplaced to George H.W. Bush.
Dukakis, now 90, stated in a cellphone interview Monday that he doesn’t recall any related dialogue when he was the nominee. However he agrees with the AP.
“It sounds to me like it might be s, apostrophe, and that’s it,” he stated.
The Harris marketing campaign, in the meantime, has but to take a transparent place. A press launch issued Monday by her New Hampshire crew touted “Harris’s optimistic imaginative and prescient,” a day after her nationwide press workplace wrote about “Harris’ seventh journey to Nevada.”
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