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August 15th is International Apostrophe Day. But ‘awareness advocates’ won’t be active in sending messages to all and sundry unlike Father’s Day or Friendship Day.
The practice commenced in 2013 is hardly known or ‘celebrated’ as it’s a niche subject and the object of honor is not a person.
This year, by sheer coincidence, attention is being paid to the tiny punctuation mark in the US thanks to the candidates who made the Democratic party’s presidential ticket.
But first, the basics just to catch up on the minuscule mark placed, inter alia, to indicate possessive proper nouns – Biden’s fumbling or Trump’s absurdities are appropriate examples! The question on the necessity of an ‘s’ after an apostrophe arises only when the noun/proper noun ends with an ‘s’.
Kamala Harris stepping into the limelight with President Biden walking to his career twilight gave life to the debate. To be sure, the question of the correct use of an apostrophe is coming up in the US Presidential race after a long gap of 130 years.
Rutherford B. Hayes, elected in 1876 was the last President with a surname ending in ‘s’. If the search is widened among the two national parties’ nominees, the last one to be adorned with a ‘s’ at the end was Democrat Michael Dukakis who lost to George H.W. Bush in 1988.
Social media’s absence in those days meant grammar nerds couldn’t clash as they do now. The debate deepened when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was chosen as Harris’ running mate. His name didn’t have ‘s’ as the last letter, but with a ‘z’ at the end, Walz’s surname ‘sounded like an s’. While there is widespread agreement that Walz’s is correct, confusion persists about Harris’ vs. Harris’s.
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is in the same grammar situation with the possessive of his name. However, since it’s spelled with an ‘e’, the extra apostrophe and s that follow don’t appear as stumbling blocks.
Unfortunately, for the apostles of grammar, there is no final word on the apt application of an apostrophe after an ‘s’ ending pronoun.
But they may keep fueling the debate to one-up each other in their grammar geekdom. The confusion is prevalent even in Harris’ campaign.
A press release by her New Hampshire team touted “Harris’s positive vision,” a day after her national press office informed “Harris’ seventh trip to Nevada.”
Since the news media controls the election coverage narrative, one may look up to them. The Associated Press Stylebook, widely considered to be the gold standard among news organizations, is clear on its rule for the possessive of singular proper names ending in S — only an apostrophe is needed (Harris’), The New York Times, The Washington Post and
The Wall Street Journal all do the opposite, opting for ’s to mark a singular possessive. I have adopted the AP pattern not for lofty grammatical wisdom, but to avoid typing an extra letter!
An interesting point in the discourse on the diacritical mark is the existence of the Apostrophe Protection Society [APS] in the UK as if the petite punctuation is a damsel in distress or an endangered species.
Indeed the discussions in the US centering on Kamala Harris show apostrophes to be alive and kicking up some grammatical storm as well! Nevertheless, the Society seems to be rendering a yeoman service in “preserving the correct use of this important, though much misused, item of punctuation” since 2001.
Other than advice on correct usage, apostrophe aficionados can shop for tailor-err grammatist-made souvenirs like T-shirts, cups, books, and wine from, where else, but Australia’s Apostrophe vineyards!
It’s always a good day to celebrate the apostrophe, but Aug. 15 may be the best day – the annual commemoration of a crooked little line that punches above its weight.
“It’s not an important date for people’s calendars, but it’s a way to help remind people that [the apostrophe is] more than just an annoying scribble on a page of text,” Bob McCalden, the Chairman of APS told Washington Post last year.
To underline the significance of apostrophes in giving the exact meaning, the example he quoted was “Residents’ refuse to be placed in trash cans”. Remove the apostrophe and you get a different meaning!
David Marsh, a copy editor at the Guardian, conceptualized International Apostrophe Day dejected by the misuse/wrong use of punctuation by commercial enterprises – including high-end shopping malls in the home of English – the UK. I am not sure why he chose 15th August though.
Coming back to Kamala Harris, the apostrophe debate was preceded by a lack of understanding of how to pronounce her first name by different schools of phonetics. Kamala is an Indian name meaning ‘lotus’ in Sanskrit and it’s a popular choice for females. Incidentally, the lotus is the election symbol of India’s ruling party.
While it is difficult for a typical American to accurately pronounce this alien name, there have been allegations of Trump’s party intentionally ‘mutilating’ the name and repeating it to convey the ‘otherness’ (not one amongst us) of Harris whose mother was an Indian immigrant and father from Jamaica. That episode of phonetic experts throwing the hat into the ring and offering mostly unsolicited (and unwelcome) advice is still on.
At present, however, it’s the turn of grammar guys finicking about apostrophes.
What’s heartening for the Democratic campaign, amid this trivia shall be the steady increase of Harris-Walz team’s popularity.
So much so that in his interview with his friend Elon Musk, Trump said that in case he was defeated in the November election, he would shift to Venezuela – safer than the US according to him!
The interview was dominated by softball questions. However, the fact that the former President conceived the possibility of a loss is an admission of Harris’s surging approval rate.
With or without an apostrophe, Kamala Harris can be possessive of the turnaround the Democratic campaign achieved after her induction. Though November is still far, the Harris-Walz combination is on a successful campaign waltz!
