KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES

Hey Kids,

Hope you’ve had a good few weeks. Apologies for the hiatus in blog posts. Hiatus. Good word. Learn it. Use it. It refers to a pause in something you’ve been doing, like your studies, work, etc. Not when you pause a film. Got it?

A number of blog posts back, I blogged about IT’S VS. ITS. Remember that one? I could probably write 10 blog posts about apostrophes, and still not be done with it. Why? The apostrophe in English is problematic, and its misuse makes it even more so.

Never fear. We will tackle each pitfall, one at a time.

Today we will take a look at names, and if and when they require an apostrophe to denote possessive. Apologies if I am throwing too many big words your way. I like big words. They convey a subtlety of meaning that simpler words elude.

So, let’s take a few family names:

Crerar (which is my family name)

Smith (a most common name)

Jones (another common name)

The Crerars are having a barbecue next weekend.

Simple enough? I have added an ‘s’ to the name ‘Crerar’. I actually mean many Crerars, just as you would speak of many apples or cars. Add an ‘s’. I am assuming that the Crerar family members are throwing this barbecue. No apostrophe required.

We are visiting the Crerars’ home this evening.

This one takes an apostrophe. Why? The home belongs to the Crerars or the Crerar family. We are not visiting the Crerar’s home. That makes it sound like there is a creature called ‘Crerar’ which requires a ‘the’ in front of it, and that there is only one. So remember that first it’s plural, so we add an ‘s’. And then the apostrophe comes after it.

Let’s move on to the Smiths.

Just as though we are moving on to the topic of cars or chickens (what an odd topic!). It takes an ‘s’, pure and simple.

Similar to the example about the Crerars, we can say: We are visiting the Smiths today.

We can also say:

The Smiths have gone on holiday.

The Smiths’ car got rear-ended. Again, like the Crerar home which belongs to more than one person, the car belongs to the Smith family, so pluralize, and then add an apostrophe. Don’t write: The Smith’s car…

Next, moving on to the Jones family. This one is tricky, but I’ll break it down as simply as I can. You will note that Jones already has an ‘s’ as part of the family name.

I can write:

Mary Jones’ handbag has gone missing.

Mary Jones has lost her handbag.

The Jones’ cottage is by a lake.

The Jones have a cottage by a lake.

I can also say:

The Joneses have invited us over.

But I can stick to:

The Jones have invited us over.

Here, I am adding an ‘es’ to pluralize their name which already has an ‘s’.

What I cannot do is break the name before the ‘s’. That would be changing their last name.

I cannot say:

Mary Jone’s handbag has gone missing.

That makes it sound like her name is only Mary Jone.

Neither can I say:

The Jone’s cottage is by a lake.

That also sounds like a strange creature, like the Crerar or the Smith.

Take a look back at the 3 examples. They are really quite simple. Just remember a few things:

1) Keep the name intact. If it has an ‘s’ to begin with, leave it. It’s part of the name.

2) If you are talking about possessive, like a car, bike, house, etc,. then in the case of names, it comes after the ‘s’ if you are talking about the whole family. If it is one person, and the name does not originally have an ‘s’, then you would have apostrophe and then ‘s’, like Stacey Mack’s apple.

3) If you are not talking about possessive, then no apostrophe.

Write me in the comments and let me know if this explanation has simplified your life.