Talk:James Woods/Archives/2018

Possessive form of James Woods' name

There are two schools of thought regarding adding an extra 's' to possessive proper nouns (names, i.e. Woods), the long held tradition was that only an apostrophe was added without the added 's', as in: James Woods' house; and the more contemporary tradition that an extraneous 's' is added to proper nouns that end in 's', as in: James Woods's house. The Chicago Manual of style recommends the former, while the Associated Press recommends the latter. The WP:MOS appears to be ambivalent on the matter, WP's Apostrophe article (Singular nouns ending with an "s" or "z" sound) suggests that the MOS relies on whether the added 's' is pronounced or not. In other words, if you can hear the added 's' when you say 'James Woods' house' then according to WP:MOS it is added only if it is uttered. Personally, I prefer the traditional, (no added 's') so I'll leave the edit. Hopefully we can gain a consensus on this. Coryphantha Talk 01:45, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree with James Woods' house. My grammar teacher used to say that the AP Stylebook is notorious for teaching the wrong way to do things. P37307 (talk) 02:07, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

P37307 That doesn't surprise me! :) I'm glad I'm not alone. What did surprise me when the AP version became the "correct" version, when for a long time their version was bad grammar, so it just looks out of place to see the added 's'. Coryphantha Talk 02:36, 9 July 2018 (UTC)