Weird Punctuation Decisions

[deird_lj]

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!

Comments

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

These are all excellent questions. If I'm writing the plural of a name that ends in "y" I just add an "s". Buffys, Henrys. I don't know that I've had to do that with any name ending in "s", so I'll have to think about that one. I think I'd just try to get around it by writing something else. lol (Just checked the style manual I use and it says just add "s" for Buffy, but it doesn't have a rule for proper nouns ending in "s". Not helpful! I think with the ones ending in "s" I'd be tempted to use an apostrophe.

ETA - I see there was a discussion further up about possessives and apostrophes. It is now generally considered most correct to use 's even with proper nouns that end in "s". However, for proper nouns, the Giles' house, Louis' hat is still considered correct as well. Consistency would be the rule there, although I will admit that I tend to say the word aloud to myself and I usually go with whichever version is the most easily pronounced. :)