Whatever led Vice President Kamala Harris to choose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame discussions about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to cheer up grammar nerds.
“The lower the risk, the bigger the fight,” said Ron Woloshun, a California-based creative director and digital marketing professional who joined the social media fray less than an hour after Harris tapped Walz last week to offer possessive proper nouns.
The Associated Press stylebook says “use only one apostrophe” for singular proper nouns that end in S: Dickens novels, labors of Hercules, life of Jesus. But not everyone agrees.
The debate over possessive first names ending in S began shortly after President Joe Biden cleared the way for Harris to run last month. Is it Harris or Harris? But Walz’s choice of name-sounding surname really heightened everything, said Benjamin Dreyer, retired Random House chief editor and author of “Dreyer’s English: A Totally Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.”
Dreyer was inundated with questions minutes after the announcement, made while he was at the dentist.
“I was like, ‘Alright, everyone just needs to relax. I’ll be home in a bit and I can go to my desk,” he said.
Although there is widespread agreement that Walz’s claim is correct, confusion about Harris versus Harris persists. Dreyer’s verdict? Add the ‘s.
“Defining the ‘s is simpler, and then you can take your valuable brain cells and apply them to more important things,” he said.
Woloshun echoed a similar sentiment on social platform X, where apostrophes are thrown like hand grenades. “The rule is simple: if you say S, spell S,” he argued.
That puts them on the same side as The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal — and at odds with the AP.
While AP’s style has evolved on many fronts over the years, there are no immediate plans to change guidance on possessives, said Amanda Barrett, AP vice president for news standards and inclusion.
“This is a long-standing policy for the AP. This served us well and we saw no real need for change,” she said. “We know the conversation exists and people make different choices when it comes to grammar, and that’s okay. Everyone makes the choice that works best for them.”
Timothy Pulju, senior professor of linguistics at Dartmouth College, said that until the 17th or 18th century, the possessive of proper names ending in S — such as Jesus or Moses — was often simply the name itself, without an apostrophe or additional S. , the apostrophe was added (of Jesus or Moses) to denote possession, although the pronunciation remained the same.
“That became the standard that I learned and adhered to, although in retrospect I don’t think it was a great standard,” he said.
This is because linguists view writing as a representation of speech, and speech has changed since then. Pulju said he expects ‘s form to eventually become dominant. But for now, he – along with the Merriam-Webster dictionary – says either way is acceptable.
“As long as people are communicating successfully, we say the language is doing what it’s supposed to,” he said. “If you can read it the way it’s written, then it seems like it’s working for people. They’re not getting confused about who running mate Tim Walz is.”
If she wins in November, Harris will become the third US president with a surname ending in S and the first since Rutherford B. Hayes, who was elected in 1876 – 130 years before the founding of Twitter – and was spared the social media frenzy . about apostrophes. Harris is the first candidate with such a complicated surname since 1984, when Democrat Michael Dukakis lost to George HW Bush.
Dukakis, now 90, said in a phone interview Monday that he doesn’t recall any similar discussions when he was nominated. But he agrees with the AP.
“It seems to me that it would be s, apostrophe, and that’s it,” he said.
Harris’ campaign, however, has not yet taken a clear position. A press release issued Monday by her New Hampshire team praised Harris’ “positive outlook,” a day after her national press office wrote about Harris’ “seventh trip to Nevada.”
