Why Martin Lewis’ is correct grammar! Blog discussion

kittykitten

Seeing as we're well and truly on the subject, could anyone who's been to the park that bears the name of St james (sorry, I had to dodge that one!) in London tell me how it is written on street signs etc? I'm a geordie, and the one thing that's always bugged the hell out of me about my favoured football team is the spelling of the name of their stadium, and the associated Metro station (local public transport), as it's displayed in huge letters at the entrance to Newcastle United's ground, that it's called " St James's Park ". Ok, you would pronounce it Jameses, but as I understand it, (and I'm a fully paid-up member of the pedants society) the correct english way to put the possessive apostrophe on a word ending in s is apostrophe only, so no second s.

jonthedog

kittykitten wrote: »

......in huge letters at the entrance to Newcastle United's ground, that it's called " St James's Park ". Ok, you would pronounce it Jameses, but as I understand it, (and I'm a fully paid-up member of the pedants society) the correct english way to put the possessive apostrophe on a word ending in s is apostrophe only, so no second s.

Hi Kitty
Actually, you are mistaken about this (as was I until fairly recently), and this is what the whole thread is about. The 'rule' is acutally deceptavely simple...if there is a double 's' sound when you say the word, then you write a double s. If there isn't, then you don't. As the word 'James' isn't a plural, then posessive James would sound like 'Jameses' when you say it. Hence the correct spelling, as indeed it is in London, IS James's. If a word is a plural, then you don't usually have a double 's' sound in posessive, for example, "the dogs' dinner" (the dinner of many dogs) is pronounced exactly the same as "the dog's dinner" (the dinner of one dog). You don't say "the dogses dinner", hence you do not write "the dogs's dinner". So the posessive apostrophe only on words ending in s rule only applies to plurals, not in situations where you would say a double s sound.