The Ugly Zuzz (More on the Apostrophe of Obsession)

David,

I have before me on my desk a promiscuous assemblage of authorities: Treble & Vallins, 'An ABC of English Usage'; Thompson and Irvine 'Collins Everyday English Usage'; Australian Style Manual (Fourth Edition); 'The Penguin Working Words: An Australian Guide to Modern English'; the venerable Fowler and Fowler  'Modern English Usage'; and last, but fiercest of all, 'Strunk and White', who cannot help being Americans, but make up for it with pith and verve. Somewhere, too, I have the peppery Mr Partridge and his 'Usage and Abusage', a book guaranteed to scorch the eyebrows off any slovenly syntactician, but these will do to be getting on with.

Let us consult the first page of William Strunk's little book, as he always called it; William Strunk who, despite being firmly dead, still has the 'Jr.' attached to his surname, in the same spirit, I suppose as the deathbed whisper, 'There is.... another.... Skywalker...'

On page xv - in the Preface, no less, such is its importance - we find the following by E.B. White:

Some years ago, when the heir to the throne of England was a child, I noticed a headline in the Times about Bonnie Prince Charlie: "CHARLES' TONSILS OUT." Immediately Rule 1 leapt to mind.

1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,
Charles's friend
Burns's poems
the witch's malice

Now, when we turn to the actual rule Strunk made, we find he allows some exceptions:

"... the possessives of ancient proper names in -es and is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. But such forms as Moses' laws, Isis' temple are commonly replaced by
the laws of Moses
the temple of Isis.

One hopes for guidance with the installation of the modern apostrophe, and one receives instead a Biblical exegesis. And the tonsils of Charles are all forgotten.

So, Strunk leaves me alone and palely loitering before the problems of

'Imants' immense canvas'
'Imants's earlier works'
'Tillers' joy when Richard Hopkinson was so soon found';
and
'Have you seen Tillers's latest retrospective at the NLA?'

What say the Brothers Fowler, that hip-hop duo from Oxford? The entry in their tyrannical handbook occupies a column and a half, and is disquietingly headed 'Possessive Puzzles'. The dudes start, like Strunk, with archaeology.

It was formerly customary, when a word ended in-s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s, e.g. Mars' hill. Venus' Bath, Achilles' thews... in poetry the custom is retained... but we now add the s.  Charles's Wain, St James's not St James' [remember this next time you take a ride on the City Circle, David], Pythagoras's doctrines...

It seems we must Imants's and Tillers's.

But stay - let us leap from Pythagoras and Parnassus, to our own day. What says the Penguin Working Words?

The broad rule is that when the noun is singular an apostrophe and s are added; when it is plural only the apostrophe is added:
one dog's nose    two dogs' noses.

All seems to be plain sailing, and we note with approval these nicely judged and politically correct examples, calculated to offend no-one; no Christian allusions to insult those of other faiths; no archaisms to affront those having a postmodern education consisting only of opinions and attitudes, no British Empire derivatives to marginalise postcolonial peoples...

'Working Words' then allows that 'The use of the apostrophe is, however, quite complex...' but completely neglects the problem of the tonsils of Charles and the works of Tillers. One turns many of their pages to reach Proper Nouns, and finds 'If possession has to be shown, however [how they do love that cautionary 'however'], an apostrophe follows the plural form of the noun The Smiths' caravan; the Joneses' geese.

I have sadly to report that their entry 'Singular and Plural' has nothing to say about Singular Forms of Proper Nouns ('Tillers' not being a plural but some archaic Dutch construction, no doubt, viz. Tillers' Thews, Tillers' Heel), and does nothing to explain how the plural of 'Jones' becomes 'Joneses', while a school, pride, or pod of the Smith ilk become merely 'Smiths'. (Just one of those things in English one has to 'know', I guess. Absorbed through usage.) It leaves one wondering about another problem, this new issue being the forming of the plural of Tillers. One Tillers, two Tillerses? And what about the Tillerseses tonsils, not to mention their caravan, much less the horrific issue of how to cope should the whole bloody Tillers family be painters... The canvasses of the Tillerses?

Let us now wearily consult the Style Manual Fourth Edition Reprinted With Corrections 1990 (I haven't the heart for the other authorities. I am now menaced by a maelstrom of apostrophes, like an acid rain of mosquito larvae, writhing to and fro and around the letter s), Oh God, the buggers have recanted and Strunked it:

    The pos s is generally used for singular nouns that end it s:
Burns's poems    Dickens's novels    Leavis's criticism

They've even... yes, you've guess it:

In the case of ancient and biblical words [note the absence of the capital B], s pos is conventionally used:

Achilles' heel    Jesus' teachings    Moses' law

(Inclusive Language be damned.)

White's preface to Strunk adds the caveat that good usage is a matter of 'ear'. Indeed, and this is where I say bedamned to Tillers's, James's, Charles's and those geese of the clan Jones. What much offends my ear is the Zuzzing that results. To obey this rule fills our already over-noisy world with a chain-saw cacophony of Jameszuzz,  Charleszuss, Imantszuzz and Tillerzuzz, beJezuzz. Ugly locutions, that could so easily be the gentle Imants' and Tillers'.

So it is Tillers plus an apostrophe, for me.

(BTW: Fowler and the Macquarie dictionary disallow learn't in your phrase:

non-negotiable rules that must be obeyed at all that we learn't unquestionably in our simple faith in the world,

and I suggest the use of 'unquestioningly', but I leave this matter up to your conscience.)

Richard Hopkinson was the only other one of our host who took up the apostrophic gauntlet I so lightly flung, but him I abolished with many curious and puissant arguments.

The axiom is for us all to avoid the Ugly Zuzz.

At 12:42 AM +1000 3/9/06, D.Stewart wrote:
as you would never say Stephen's Gard's or Stephen's Gard for example, except for Stephen's guard.

Indeed, but neither of my names ends in s, and neither does David Stewart, and thus we clearly have never faced, or caused anyone, such apostrophical cruces.

Exercise 1: Form possessives, plurals, and then possessive plurals, from these proper nouns, and then for the sake of God, do not show the answers to me:

Miles Davis, Demis Roussos, Ross Edwards, Moss Cass, Lucas Heights, Dundas Presbyterians, and Airds Payless.

Finally: by referring to Imants as 'immense', I was punning on his achievement as an artist, although I have indeed seen a wall-sized work of his. A mountain slope, I seem to recall. Is that the example of Imants' work you were referring to? Or was it one of Tillers' earlier oeuvres?

Chingalacka,

SDG