Where to Place the Possessive Apostrophe in a Surname

Where to Place the Possessive Apostrophe in a Surname Where to Place the Possessive Apostrophe in a Surname Where to Place the Possessive Apostrophe in a Surname By Mark Nichol You see them all the time during rural drives and suburban errands alike, those olde-fashioned wooden shingles mounted on mailboxes or dangling from porches or fastened to walls: â€Å"The Smith’s† and the like- stark reminders that possessives still throw many people for a loop. Rules about possessives can be complicated, but this error is straightforward enough: Take away the apostrophe and the final s, and what do you have? â€Å"The Smith.† That’s obviously not right (unless the resident ostentatiously refers to himself as â€Å"The Smith† or employs hammer, tongs, and anvil to practice her livelihood). Who lives at this house? The Munsters. Whose residence is it, then? â€Å"The Munsters’† - or perhaps â€Å"The Munsters’ house.† (The additional s is pervasive in books and many other media, while its absence is typical in journalism in the old days of mechanical typesetting, that meant one less piece of type to position and other more casual or ephemeral kinds of publications. In the organic medium of wood, the simpler style can easily be forgiven.) And what if the surname already ends with an s? The rule is to append es to the name, so, the plural of Addams is Addamses. The sign should therefore read â€Å"The Addamses,† or â€Å"The Addamses’ house.† This construction is admittedly cumbersome, and there is a way to avoid it without giving a passing copy editor a case of the shingles: Label your abode â€Å"The Addams house† or inform visitors and passersby that â€Å"The Addams family lives here.† This wording is not as folksy, but it still manages a homey touch without adding sibilant syllables or pesky apostrophes. Admittedly, this ubiquitous error is as much the fault of the sign maker as it is that of the person who commissions the sign, but because it’s difficult to make amends by amending an error engraved in wood, you might want to remember, when you approach the artist’s workbench, the rule for the proper position for the possessive apostrophe. (And email the scribe a link to this post.) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Style category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Apply to, Apply for, and Apply withBody Parts as Tools of MeasurementA Yes-and-No Answer About Hyphenating Phrases

The Difference Between a Commonwealth and a State

The Difference Between a Commonwealth and a State Have you ever wondered why some states have the word commonwealth in their name? Some people believe there is a distinction between states and states that are also commonwealths but this is a misconception. When used in reference to one of the fifty states there is no difference between a commonwealth and a state. There are four states which are officially known as commonwealths: Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts. The word appears in their full state name and in documents like the state constitution. Some places, like Puerto Rico, are also referred to as a Commonwealth, where the term means a location that is voluntarily united with the U.S. Why Are Some States Commonwealths? To Locke, Hobbes, and other 17th-century writers, the term commonwealth meant an organized political community, what we today call a state. Officially Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts are all commonwealths. This means that their full state names are actually The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and so on. When Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts became part of the United States, they merely took the old form of state in their title. Each of these states was also a former British Colony. After the Revolutionary War, having Commonwealth in the state name was a sign that the former colony was now ruled by a collection of its citizens. Vermont and Delaware both use the term commonwealth and state interchangeably in their constitutions. The Commonwealth of Virginia will also sometimes use the term State in an official capacity. This is why there is both a Virginia State University and a Virginia Commonwealth University. Much of the confusion surrounding the term commonwealth probably comes from the fact that a commonwealth has a different meaning when its not applied to a state. Today, Commonwealth also means a political unit having local autonomy but voluntarily united with the United States. While the US has many territories there are only two commonwealths;  Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands, a group of 22 islands in the Western Pacific ocean. Americans who travel between the continental U.S. and its commonwealths do not need a passport. However, if you have a layover that stops in any other nation, you will be asked for a passport even if you do not leave the airport. Differences Between Puerto Rico and the States While residents of Puerto Rico are  American citizens they have no voting representatives in Congress or the Senate. They are also not allowed to vote in the Presidential elections. While Puerto Ricans do not have to pay income tax they do pay many other taxes. Which means that, like the residents of Washington D.C., many Puerto Ricans feel they suffer from taxation without representation because while they do send representatives to both Houses, their reps cannot vote. Puerto Rico is also not eligible for federal budget money allocated to the States. There is much debate around whether  Puerto Rico should become a state or not.