It probably was n’t a desire to stoke racial tensions when vice-president Kamala Harris chose Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. However, it is not difficult to pique the interest of vocabulary geeks. The battle is more intense, according to Californian artistic director and online marketer Ron Woloshun, who jumped into the battle on social media less than an hour after Harris selected Walz to give his opinion on jealous proper nouns last week.
The Associated Press Stylebook says “use just an apostrophe” for distinct right titles ending in S: Dickens ‘ books, Hercules ‘ labours, Jesus ‘ life. But not everyone agrees.
Shortly after Prez Joe Biden opened the door for Harris to work next month, a conversation about jealous proper names ending in S began. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s? But the selection of Walz with his sounds-like-an-s title really ramped it up, said Benjamin Dreyer, the retired version main at Random House and writer of” Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style”. Within hours of the news, which occurred while he was at the dentist, Dreyer was flooded with inquiries. ” I was like,’ All straight, everyone just has to shiver.'”
While there is widespread agreement that Walz’s is right, uncertainty persists about Harris ‘ vs. Harris’s. Dreyer’s conviction? Put the’ s.” To established the’ s is only simpler, and then you can get your important brain cells and use them to more crucial things”, he said.
Woloshun had a similar point about X, where commas are being thrown around like palm bombs. ” The concept is simple: If you say the S, magic the S”, he argued. They are at conflict with AP because of their position with the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.
While AP design has evolved on many fronts over the years, there are no instant plans to change the direction on possessives, said Amanda Barrett, AP’s vice-president for media standards and participation. This is a well-established AP policy. It has served us well, and we’ve not seen any real need to change”, she said. ” We do know that the conversation is out there and people make different choices, and that’s all fine”.
Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in America, splits the difference: For names ending in an S or Z sound, you can add’ s or just an apostrophe, though the dictionary says’ s is the more common choice. Prior to the 17th or 18th century, Timothy Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth College, said that the possessive of proper names ending in S, such as Jesus or Moses, was frequently simply the name itself, without any apostrophes or additional S.
” That became kind of the standard that I was taught and adhere to, even though in retrospect, I do n’t think it’s a great standard”, he said. Because linguists view writing as a form of speech, and speech has evolved since then. Pulju stated that he anticipates the’ s form to eventually take over the table. But for now, he- agreeing with Merriam-Webster- says either way is acceptable. ” As long as people are communicating successfully”, he said. They do n’t get confused about Tim Walz’s running mate, they say.
If she wins in November, Harris would become the fourth US president with a last name ending in S and the first since Rutherford B. Hayes, who won the election in 1876, 130 years before Twitter’s founding, and was spared the apostrophe-crazed social media craze. Harris is the first candidate to win with such a difficult last name since George H. W. Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis in a 1988 primary election. Dukakis, now 90, said in a phone interview Monday that he does n’t recall any similar discussion when he was the nominee. However, he concurs with the AP. ” It sounds to me like it would be s, apostrophe, and that’s it”, he said.
The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has yet to take a clear stand. Her New Hampshire team released a press release on Monday that touted” Harris’s positive vision,” a day after her national press office reported on” Harris ‘ seventh trip to Nevada.”
