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

[me-llamo-nic.livejournal.com]

I'd just take the plural away from the name. Five people named Louis. Two Slayers. Eight Kings named Henry. Titles and other pronouns seem like the way to go. Mostly, "be consistent" is the most sensible advice I've seen. Readers will figure it out as long as you're consistent.

[snickfic]

I'm big on apostrophes for pluralizing weird things. Like, I still say B's and 1960's, even though apparently the fashion is to go without apostrophes nowadays. So, hip hip hooray to Mary-Sue's.

[rahirah]

I loathe the apostrophe-adding route with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. Just plain Marks and Buffys would be my choice.

[(Anonymous)]

What's your opinion on using a pluralistic third-person pronoun in place of a singular non-gendered third-person pronoun? ("They" instead of "he" or "she".)

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of the unnecessary apostrophe. It's hard enough to learn to use them correctly without complicating matters. Sorry, Jane Espensen, but Buffies is just silly. Buffys is the plural; Buffy's the possessive.

Be consistent is great advice, but consistent and correct is even better.

[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. :)

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what the legit correct thing is, but I think the apostrophe thing is just easier and more clear.

(I have totally always had trouble with this thing though, so if I find a comment-generated Perfect Solution I will be very pleased.)

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

I can guarantee I do something different every time!

I am married to an editor/writer, half of his family are professional writers and none of it seemed to have rubbed off on me.

But I would definitely go with Buffys. Buffies is just silly. **g**

apostrophology

[glorious-pancake-morning.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

I read "Mary Sue's" as a mistake. I by far prefer Mary Sues.

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!)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I was taught that the apostrophe replaces a missing letter - so Mark's book is the abbreviated form of the older English 'Mark, his book' and so on. Therefore it would be incorrect to put it in if you mean more than one Mark - just as it would be if you were talking about the unit of currency - more than one Bosnian mark, or the since replaced Deutschmark, is always written "marks".


More than one Louis however has the problem that words ending in 's' would normally be pluralised using 'es' - buses, asses, etc - except that more than one Louis would then be Louises and so the normal form of pluralising will change the gender. In that case it might be reasonable to replace that 'e' with an apostrophe so that you get Louis's - and so to then denote something (say a pen) as the possession of a single Louis you would replace the 'his' completely so making "Louis' pen".

See? Simples! To quote Aleksandr Orlov of Compare the Meerkat dot com! (Aleksandr Orlov is the most loved person in British advertising, and would doubtless be the next Prime Minister if he stood for Parliament... it's hard to explain but if you've never come across the Compare the Market ads you must go to look!)

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Here's what I do:

An apostrophe stands for a missing letter or letters. In old English, the genetive case was formed by adding -es to the end of a word: "the book of Mark" would be written as "Markes book". Modern English misses out the 'e' sound, and so the word is shortened to Mark's instead of Markes.

As such, I never include an apostrophe to mark a plural. Not only is it, I submit, incorrect, it's also confusing because it can be mistaken for a possessive. (I'm generally a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, when it comes to grammar; but something can still be "wrong" in a language if it prevents people communicating their meanings effectively.)

So:
80s not 80's
The As and the Bs, not the A's and the B's.


I would write the plural of Louis (French pronunciation, /'lu:ɪ/) as Louis (pronounced /'lu:ɪz/), although for clarity I might reword the sentence to make it clear it's a plural. If you pronounced it as an English name, sounding the final 's' in the singular, then the plural would be 'Louises' - but because that sounds like the plural of the girl's name Louise, I'd probably try to reword the sentence.

Technically, I'd say the plural of "buffy" would be "buffies", but when it's a proper name I'd pluralise Buffy as Buffys, just because that feels more respectful.

The plural of King Henry is King Henrys, because 'Henry' is a proper noun, not an adjective. While it's fun to pluralise expressions like 'Lords Appellant' or 'Courts Martial' or 'Advocates General', those are simply a case of putting the adjective after the noun instead of before it in imitation of mediaeval French practice. A court martial is a martial court, an advocate general is a general advocate; but king Henry isn't a henry king. :-)

I tend to add 's to proper names ending in -s to denote the possessive, because thaty's also how I pronounce them. Giles's book, because I'd pronounce that /'dʒaɪlzəz 'bʊk/ not /'dʒaɪlz 'bʊk/.

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I think of apostrophe for weird plurals as a specifically Dutch thing to do - there it is used consistently for all foreign words imported into common use: foto's, for example.

I've literally never seen it in English, which is... surprising, given what your books say.

And I still don't like it, I'm afraid.