This is a great thread, which has not descended to flaming...
Quote:
Originally Posted by OneOfOne
The other is putting 's at the end of words ending in an "s" already, like...can't think of one, maybe like... "the peoples's judgement", should be "the peoples' judgement"?
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But (is that ok?) it is now ok to use either:
the Jones' dog
or
the Jones's dog
, which is a rule that has changed since I was at school.
Perhaps there never was a rule and both have always been correct; we were simply forced to use the first one and told the second was incorrect, making it a rule by common usage. Perhaps Mark Tredinnick's book will give me the answer.
Regarding Latin rules that have been forced upon English:
I first came across this fifteen years ago when a friend submitted her PhD thesis in which the first line contained a split infinitive, "To boldly go..." (she was a fan Star of Trek). One of the examiners crossed it out. The "rules" had changed, however, and it was okay to use split inifinitives again, although the examiner did not know that...
