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Weird Punctuation Decisions
I’ve been corrected in the comments to my last post for pluralising “Mary-Sue” incorrectly.
And while part of me wants to wave my editing course in people’s faces and go “I know better than anyone! Hah!” and another part of me wants to change it so that people won’t think I am bad at punctuation, I thought it might be more interesting to make a post about it – because I’m obsessed with language, and find this stuff far too fascinating.
Yes, I did check my textbooks before posting. And they… disagreed.
Let’s look at a boring and normal name.
Mark
Original word: Mark
Possessive form: Mark’s (as in “This is Mark’s hat.”)
Plural form: well, it’d be “Marks”, right? After all, simple English plurals are made by sticking an S on the end – that’s really all that has to be done.
Which would be all well and good – if all names were names like Mark, Luke, and Katherine.
However…
Louis
This one already has enough debate over the possessive form. (Is it “Louis’s hat”, or “Louis’ hat”? No-one’s quite sure.) Add in the possibility of more than one Louis, and there’s a whole new issue.
If there are five people called Louis in one room, are they the “five Louis”, or “five Louises”, or “five Louiss”?
Buffy
If Buffy clones herself, are there “two Buffys”, or “two Buffies”?
(Jane Espenson prefers Buffies.)
Henry
Has England had “eight King Henrys”, “eight King Henries”, or “eight Kings Henry”?
My textbooks disagree. One recommends a different style for each name – “Marks”, “Louis’s”, “Buffys”, and “Kings Henry”, respectively – one says “do whatever you want, just be consistent”, and one says to use apostrophes: “three Mark’s, five Louis’s, two Buffy’s, and eight King Henry’s”.
I decided to go the apostrophe-adding route, even though I knew it would look like I was mixing it up with possessives.
So: was I right? Or wrong? Or should I have done something completely different?
Tell me in the comments!
And while part of me wants to wave my editing course in people’s faces and go “I know better than anyone! Hah!” and another part of me wants to change it so that people won’t think I am bad at punctuation, I thought it might be more interesting to make a post about it – because I’m obsessed with language, and find this stuff far too fascinating.
Yes, I did check my textbooks before posting. And they… disagreed.
Let’s look at a boring and normal name.
Mark
Original word: Mark
Possessive form: Mark’s (as in “This is Mark’s hat.”)
Plural form: well, it’d be “Marks”, right? After all, simple English plurals are made by sticking an S on the end – that’s really all that has to be done.
Which would be all well and good – if all names were names like Mark, Luke, and Katherine.
However…
Louis
This one already has enough debate over the possessive form. (Is it “Louis’s hat”, or “Louis’ hat”? No-one’s quite sure.) Add in the possibility of more than one Louis, and there’s a whole new issue.
If there are five people called Louis in one room, are they the “five Louis”, or “five Louises”, or “five Louiss”?
Buffy
If Buffy clones herself, are there “two Buffys”, or “two Buffies”?
(Jane Espenson prefers Buffies.)
Henry
Has England had “eight King Henrys”, “eight King Henries”, or “eight Kings Henry”?
My textbooks disagree. One recommends a different style for each name – “Marks”, “Louis’s”, “Buffys”, and “Kings Henry”, respectively – one says “do whatever you want, just be consistent”, and one says to use apostrophes: “three Mark’s, five Louis’s, two Buffy’s, and eight King Henry’s”.
I decided to go the apostrophe-adding route, even though I knew it would look like I was mixing it up with possessives.
So: was I right? Or wrong? Or should I have done something completely different?
Tell me in the comments!
apostrophology
I'd use Buffys, Henrys, Louises. I think there's a rule that you're not meant to alter spelling of proper nouns.
Once the word drops out of properness into common usage (a la "to google" from Google the search engine), it's okay to drop the capital and impose grammar rules on it.
I'm not referencing anything though, so feel free to tell me I'm talking out of my arse!
(I'm Miriam from your 4002 class, by the way... so you don't screen me for eternity!)
no subject
Once the word drops out of properness into common usage (a la "to google" from Google the search engine), it's okay to drop the capital and impose grammar rules on it.
Just trying to envisage a situation in which "Henrying" something could become a verb... :)
(Hi! Thanks for letting me know it's you - my general rule here is to screen anonymous comments unless I know who they are or how they found me.)
no subject