I Love It When a Grammar Debate Breaks Out!
My Facebook account is a sort of merge of my personal and professional worlds — I share some friends on Facebook who I primarily engage with on Twitter, but I also have friends from my “secret life” (note: it’s not so secret, really) as a poetry slam organizer, and IRL friends and even people I went to high school with. (Who I never would have reconnected with if not for Facebook.)
But occasionally, Facebook’s a very fun place for me to be, and today is one of those days. Two conversations same up simultaneously — from different FB friends, different worlds — asking about the correct possessive form to use for the singular s — s’ vs. s’s. In cases like this, in the media world, I defer to AP Style. But I also, in the debates I plunged myself into, queried myself on the first example that came to mind — Lou Reed singing, “And I feel just like Jesus’ son.” So, I joined Team S’, even though I know I’ve used s’s, perhaps in leaning toward my grad school days when MLA with *the* style I defaulted to in everything. (Except in my anthropology classes, when I had to shift over to APA.)
But it tickles me that possessives are the topic of the day, and I’m thrilled that Facebook’s a spot where a bunch of us can have that conversation, be it poets, fellow publicists, or even my wife, on her iPhone from the San Antonio Zoo with the kids.
