Talk:Paul Preuss (climber)

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Plural of Jones and possessive of Joneses

Akseli9, please stop reverting this change. Regarding the sentence that begins, "Even before the Joneses' tragedy. . . ": The tragedy involved two people named Jones. So, there were two Joneses. The plural of a last name follows the normal rules of pluralization: If it ends in an s, you add -es. The possessive of a plural that ends in an s or z sound is formed by adding an apostrophe.

Another option, which may be what you and the original author intended, would be "Jones tragedy," in which Jones is used as a noun modifier (noun adjunct) for tragedy. Normally, noun modifiers are singular, so Jones is correct. An apostrophe would be incorrect in this case.

"the Jones's tragedy" (your change) cannot possibly be correct under any interpretation. "The Jones" (singular) makes no sense in any construction. Jones's is the possessive of the singular Jones, but the tragedy involved two Joneses. If using a noun modifier, Jones's is also incorrect, as noun modifiers do not assume a possessive form. Finally, Jones's cannot be a plural form, since plurals are not formed using apostrophes (except in rare situations that do not apply here). Holy (talk) 18:27, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]