6 Comments

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

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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'.

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

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

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

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

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