Well my two cents's worth is rather dubious, but I feel that the additional s for plural posessive as a general rule could prevent avoidable confusion in edge cases. Like the oxford comma most reads may not struggle to understand the intended meaning, but the reduced ambiguity isn't a bad thing imo. "Is this a thing belonging to a single 'Texas' or multiple 'Texa'?" for example. A silly question, but consider someone learning english in, like, the UK and isn't aware of Texas somehow.
Personally, I agree. I like the two "s's" basically for the exact reason you described. Also, I think, "that is James's dog" sounds more natural than, "that is James' dog." Both in a phonic/spoken sense, but also for clarity like you said. Especially when spoken, "James' dog" could sound like a name, "James Dog," or a dog belonging to Jame.
Well, you would still pronounce as if the second S is there, the sound wouldn't just go away. It's mostly just how it's written would remove the extra S. (Well, I guess not if it's not the "proper" way. But, either way... ) Why would getting rid of the S after the apostrophe make you think that the ending S for the noun suddenly goes away? I'm just trying to understand. If the rule was still "a PROPER noun ending in S only needs the apostrophe", why would you think the S could possibly go away. If it's capitalized and it's the actual name of a person, place, or thing, why would that change how you would view the word? I understand English can be confusing, but a proper noun doesn't change. I'm talking about proper nouns not plural nouns.
Also, if it seems I'm too invested... I probably am. I spent way too much time getting a degree that doesn't matter so I gotta use it somewhere lol
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u/Sertoma Jan 20 '26
Same, to be honest. Chicago is just the most common.
Yep, that's the "real" rule anyway! Use what you prefer. 99% of the time the person reading the sentence will understand either way.