Friday, January 4, 2008

Fun with the Chicago Manual

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, these are all correct:

Thomas’s situation
Thomas’ sake
the bass's swimming
the bass' sake
politics' meaning
United States’ borders
Jesus’s ideas
Euripides’ ideas
Camus’ novels

2 comments:

Temperance said...

“For the bass’ sake, don’t use so much lemon.”

Does the apostrophe prompt an “es” sound in the spoken form, or does it just sound like “bass?” If the former, that apostrophe is doing a lot of work.

I visited the University of Chicago a few times and always walked away depressed for some reason. I think all of the gargoyle statues staring down from the buildings mess with peoples’ heads (hence “the bass’ sake”).

June Casagrande said...

People have asked me a number of times: Do you pronounce it "Jamesziz house" or just like "James house"? My answer: I don't know where to turn for a definitive answer on that, so I keep my trap shut.

I was taught it was the latter -- that James's is pronounced exactly like James. But I was educated in Florida public schools, so I'm not trusting anything I was taught and neither should you.

: )

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