Today is One-liner Wednesday at Linda G. Hill’s site, but of course my one-liner will be a bit longer… (https://lindaghill.com/2018/01/17/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan-daily-prompt-january-17-2018/)  These Jots are not only my 500-words a day challenge, but also part of my  Ultimate Blogging Challenge challenge (http://ultimateblogchallenge.com).

Oh boy.  No theme today, so now I have to decide what to write about.  The 500 word challenge suggestion is to write a manifesto – a statement of purpose that represents what I believe in.  And the Ultimate Blogging Challenge suggestion is to share something from the past – my personal past, my business’s past, or the world’s past.  Hey, is the possessive of business “business’ “ or “business’s”?  Does anyone really know how this works?  I mean, when you say the possessive of business, it sounds like the plural, right?  But in writing we are supposed to add that apostrophe thing, but when a word ends with one or more “s”’s (yikes!) what are we supposed to write?  Where does the damn apostrophe go?

So, since I don’t know what else to write about today, let’s do this.  It’s not a manifesto, but it might turn into a bit of a cause, depending on what I find out as I Google possessives and apostrophes.  Here goes!

According to APA, which is the American Psychological Association citation guide (something I know about all too well, working in academia and having suffered through APA citations for my Masters thesis…), you always add an extra “s” after the apostrophe.  Ok, nice to have a rule.  Of course, every rule comes with exceptions, so the exception here, according to APA, is you do NOT add an extra “s” when the word or name in question ends with an “s” that isn’t pronounced. Sigh.  Like “Decartes’ theory”.  (http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/06/forming-possessives-with-singular-names.html).

And to further confuse me (although admittedly, it does not take much to confuse me), words/names that end in “s”, where the “s” is pronounced normally, but the extra “s” of the possessive is NOT pronounced, you don’t add the extra “s” in spelling”.  So, Charles’s cat, as opposed to Bridges’ cat.  Stupid English spelling.  (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/apostrophe)

Then, there is this helpful advice Many common nouns end in the letter s (lens, cactus, bus, etc.). So do a lot of proper nouns (Mr. Jones, Texas, Christmas). There are conflicting policies and theories about how to show possession when writing such nouns. There is no right answer; the best advice is to choose a formula and stay consistent. “” (http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp)

So, I guess in the end, just do what you like as long as you keep it consistent.  And never, Never, NEVER add an apostrophe to “it” when it is possessive.  It is NOT “it’s door”, although it is “it’s a door”.  It’s is for “it is” , it is not for the possessive of “it” (was that too many “it is’s” for you?”.  Please, for the love of whatever you believe in, DON’T add an apostrophe to “it” for possession.  Just…don’t.

And now, to end, and this had nothing whatsoever to do with apostrophes or possessive nouns, but I just watched Seth Meyers from last night, and I just had to say that I LOVE Leslie Jones (from SNL). She just make me laugh and laugh and laugh.  I love Seth too, but Leslie Jones?  Man – she is awesome!