circleWhatever Kamala Harris’s reason for choosing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t to stoke a debate over apostrophes, but it doesn’t take much to infuriate grammar nerds.
“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” said Ron Woloshan, a creative director and digital marketer from California who jumped into the debate on social media last week less than an hour after the vice president picked Walz as his running mate, offering his opinion on possessive proper nouns.
The US-based news agency Associated Press (AP) states in its style book that singular proper nouns ending in S should “use only an apostrophe” – for example, in Charles Dickens’ novels, The Labors of Hercules and The Life of Jesus. But not everyone agrees.
The debate over possessive proper nouns ending in s began shortly after Joe Biden endorsed Harris’ candidacy last month. Is it Ms. Harris or Ms. Harris? The selection of Waltz, whose last name sounds like an s, fueled the debate, says Benjamin Dreyer, a former editor-in-chief of Random House and author of “Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.”
Dreier was in the middle of a dental appointment when the announcement was made, and within minutes, questions were pouring in. “I was like, ‘Hey guys, calm down. I’m going to be able to go home and get to my desk in a little while.'”
While there is widespread agreement that Waltz is right, confusion persists about Harris v. Harris. What about Dreier? Add an “‘s.”
“‘s easy to set up, and then you can apply your precious brain cells to more important things.”
Woloshun echoed similar sentiments on social platform X, where apostrophes are hurled like grenades: “The rule is simple: when you pronounce the s, spell it,” he argued.
That puts them on the same level as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and at odds with the AP.
While the AP’s style has evolved in many ways over the years, it has no immediate plans to change its possessive guidelines, said Amanda Barrett, the press’s vice president for news standards and inclusion.
“This is a long-standing policy for AP. It has worked well for us and we see no need to change it,” she said. “I know there are debates about grammar and different people make different choices, but that’s fine. Everyone makes the choice that’s best for them.”
The Guardian’s style guide states: “The possessive form of words or names ending in S is usually an apostrophe followed by a second S (Jones’s, James’s). However, follow the pronunciation and use apostrophes in plurals where it helps: Mephistopheles’, Waters’, Hedges’ rather than Mephistopheles’, Waters’, Hedges’.”
Timothy Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth College, said that up until the 17th or 18th century, the possessive form of proper names ending in s, such as Jesus or Moses, was often simply the name itself, without an apostrophe or extra s. Eventually, an apostrophe was added to indicate possession (Jesus or Moses), but the pronunciation remained the same.
“That became kind of the standard that I was taught and followed, but looking back, I don’t think it was a great standard,” he said.
Because linguists consider written language to be an expression of spoken language, and speech has changed since then, Pulju expects the “” form to eventually predominate. But for now, he said, as well as Merriam-Webster, that either way is acceptable.
“As long as people are communicating well, language is working,” he said. “If people can read both ways, it seems to be working well for them. People aren’t confused about whose running mate Tim Walz is.”
If elected in November, Harris would be the fourth U.S. president with a surname ending in s, following Rutherford B. Hayes, who was elected in 1876, 130 years before the founding of the United States, and avoided a social media furor over an apostrophe. Harris would be the first candidate with such a difficult surname since Democrat Michael Dukakis lost to George H.W. Bush in 1984.
Dukakis, now 90, said in a phone interview Monday that he didn’t remember a similar debate happening when he was a candidate, but agreed with the AP’s findings.
“To me it sounds like an s and an apostrophe, that’s it,” he said.
The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has yet to take a clear stance. A press release from the Harris campaign’s New Hampshire team touted “Harris’s positive vision,” while the day before, the campaign’s national communications office reported on “Harris’ seventh visit to Nevada.”
