A Sense of Doubt blog post #3465 - Harris-Walz and Grammar Nerds
I love that I just learned that there's an Apostrophe Protection Society.
Thanks for tuning in.
Time for the COUNTDOWN!!!
083 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/10/us/harris-walz-apostrophe-possessive.html
Is It Harris’ or Harris’s? Add a Walz, and It’s Even Trickier.
With Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz running on the same ticket, grammar geeks are in overdrive.
When Vice President Kamala Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz of
Minnesota as her running mate, she put to rest weeks of speculation over the
future of the Democratic ticket. But the battle over apostrophes was just
getting started.
Where were voters (and journalists) supposed to place the
possessive squiggle?
It all felt a bit, as some social media users described,
like apostrophe hell: Would it be Ms. Harris’s and Mr. Walz’s or Ms. Harris’
and Mr. Walz’s? The Harrises and the Walzes? The Harrises’ family home and the
Walzes’ family dog? It was enough to see double, made worse by the fact
that stylebooks, large news organizations and grammar geeks were all split or
contradicted one another.
“Anyone who tells you there are universal rules to how to
add an apostrophe ending in S is either wrong or lying,” Jeffrey Barg, a grammar columnist,
said. “You can’t be wrong as long as you’re consistent.”
The Associated Press Stylebook, widely considered to be the
gold standard among news organizations, is clear on its rule for the possessive
of singular proper names ending in S — only
an apostrophe is needed (Harris’), though there are always exceptions.
The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all do the opposite, opting
for ’s to mark a singular possessive and a simple apostrophe for plural
possessive (Harrises’ and Walzes’).
Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in
America, splits the difference: For names ending in an S or Z sound,
you can add ’s or just an apostrophe, though the dictionary says ’s is the more
common choice.
“People want to know what the rules are because they want to
do this correctly,” said Mr. Barg, who was raised on The A.P. Stylebook. But at
the same time, “you can’t impose language from the top down — it’s a bottom-up
thing,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a learning experience for us as a
country.”
According to Merriam-Webster, the apostrophe first appeared in the early 16th century and was
originally used to indicate that something had been taken out of a word. Couple
the evolution of the punctuation mark with the difficulty of the English
language, which draws deeply from German and French, and problems are bound to
arise. The core of the stumble falls when we go to write something that does
not match how we talk.
“This is the kind of thing you get when you have three
languages in a trench coat,” said Nicole Holliday, an acting associate
professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
People can easily pronounce the plural or possessive of
Harris or Walz, both of which contain epenthetic schwas, Ms. Holliday said.
When a word ends in an S or Z sound, we insert a schwa — the “uh”-like sound
that can be represented by any vowel in the English alphabet — to break up a
block of consonants.
Put two epenthetic schwas on a ticket and the so-called apostrophe hell breaks loose. She surmised that the online debate might be fueled by Democrats wanting to one-up each other in their grammar geekdom.
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is in
the same grammar situation with the possessive of his name, “but because we
spell it with an E, nobody thinks that’s weird,” she said.
Ms. Holliday had historically used The A.P. style in her
research of Ms. Harris’s linguistic choices. But she is starting to
come around to using ’s on all presidential and vice-presidential candidates —
Harris’s, Walz’s, Trump’s, Vance’s.
“I love an elegant solution,” she said.
Ellen Jovin, the author of “Rebel With a Clause,” said that
A.P. style “causes strain on the system,” in part because in a way it splits
the ticket — it’s Harris’ but Walz’s. “That’s going to freak people out,” she
said.
“I feel it’s one of the more emotional hot-button grammar
issues out there,” she continued. “English speakers often don’t like to see S’s
jammed up against each other, which I don’t really relate to.”
But at the end of the day, withholding an extra S after
Harris “just doesn’t fit what people say,” she said.
Bob McCalden, who leads the Apostrophe Protection
Society in the United Kingdom, agreed.
“The challenge I would put to anyone that said, no, the
possessive of Harris is just with an apostrophe, is how do you say that?” he
said. By using only an apostrophe and not including an extra S, the name
doesn’t flow properly, he said.
The questions of apostrophe placement regarding Harris and
Walz are far from the most debated use of the punctuation mark, Mr. McCalden
said. (That would be using orange’s instead of oranges.) But the discourse
comes at a pivotal time for apostrophes: Thursday, Aug. 15, is International
Apostrophe Day.
Just putting these down here for funsies...
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2408.13 - 10:10
- Days ago = 3329 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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