6 Comments
User's avatar
Sean Murphy's avatar

What about "Singular proper nouns that end in s?"

Expand full comment
Lucy's avatar

For a singular proper noun you add an s, so James's and Giles's are correct.

The exception is if it's a biblical or classical name where the the generally accepted rule is to have no additional s, e.g. Jesus', Moses', Achilles' and Zeus'.

Expand full comment
Sean Murphy's avatar

Thanks! Any idea why the biblical/classical names are handled differently?

Expand full comment
Sean Murphy's avatar

For example: James. Should that be James's or James'? Even the Grammarly paged linked to in this post skips over that.

Expand full comment
AP's avatar

Some style guides (Strunk and White!!) prefer the added 's' (which one actually says as an extra syllable in most cases anyway).

Expand full comment
Adela's avatar

+1 to Sean's question -- that's the one I see messed up all the time :)

Expand full comment