Thursday, 14 April 2005

punctuation

A personal rule about punctuation: A singular possessive word ending in s gets an 's even if the next word begins with s, even if the possessor is Biblical: Jesus's socks.

Otherwise, I would have punctuated this entry differently:

  • Martin Amis's The Information
  • Robertson Davies's Salterton Trilogy and
  • Completeness's sake
    The third looks funny to me (maybe four s's in a row are too many), as so does the second ("Davies" looks like a plural word that shouldn't take an s after its apostrophe).

    I have questions too. When the possessor is a book and therefore italicized, does the 's take italics as well? Yes, for visual consistency or no, because those last two characters are not part of the title? I say no, so that the apostrophe-s are not mistaken. Or, if the word is in quotation marks and also possessive, which takes precedent? If I wanted to refer to "Davies" or the punctuation thereof, should I write "Davies's" or "Davies"'s? I should rewrite the sentence.

  • yoga

    A good mid-day break, with lots of stretching and breathing and a little balancing.