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+--- Thread: male Keepers of the Moon possessive spelling (/showthread.php?tid=3007)
male Keepers of the Moon possessive spelling - speitzer - 07-22-2013
This is a nit-picky question, so please put on your grammar hat or take a pass!
Typically to make something possessive you add an 's to the of the word. I.e.- Mark's sandwich, the candy's sweetness. But with the names of male Keepers of the Moon having an apostrophe near the end of their name already, it begins to look silly and read unclearly, defeating the purpose of punctuation.
I.e.- My character's name is Spei'li Nmolo. So something that belonged to Spei'li would be Spei'li's object.
Since I'm doing a lot of character writing until the game comes back online, I was wondering if anyone else had run into this, what their solution is, and if there are similar cases/solutions in RL phrases and situations that you can quote from.
I'm thinking of going with nixing the 2nd apostrophe, since there will rarely if ever be more than one Spei'li. So, instead of Spei'li's object, it would be "Spei'lis object."
RE: male Keepers of the Moon possessive spelling - FreelanceWizard - 07-22-2013
To be honest, I plan on sticking with the normal English syntax (so it'd be Spei'li's object, or if his name ended in an S, Spei'lis's object) even though it might look a little clunky.
My reasoning is that "them's the rules" (of the major style guides), and changing them up might engender confusion in readers.That said, with the fast pace of typing in RP and the commonality of typos, I think you can do whatever you want as long as it's clear in context. I doubt anyone will make a big deal about it.
RE: male Keepers of the Moon possessive spelling - Asyria - 07-22-2013
Honestly, the whole 's thing lokos funny to me even without any other apostrophe, but that's because english is my 2nd language and my 1st do things differently.
RE: male Keepers of the Moon possessive spelling - CassandraJean - 07-22-2013
I took to writing Tim'as instead of Tim'a's... which... that many apostrophes just seems bizarre to look at even if it is probably the grammatically correct way to do it, haha.
RE: male Keepers of the Moon possessive spelling - Adelpha - 07-22-2013
I think your example would personally confuse me, or at least cause me to pause to process it for a moment. ("Spei'lis object? What's a 'spei'lis object?'") I think you'd just be trading one readability problem for another, IMHO.
RE: male Keepers of the Moon possessive spelling - Zyrusticae - 07-22-2013
Yeah, I'd prefer to just go with the extra apostrophe. T'ranu's greataxe, for example. I mean, it looks weird, but that's just the way it is, and doing it any other way is just too damn confusing.
RE: male Keepers of the Moon possessive spelling - Xha'li Moui - 07-22-2013
(07-22-2013, 01:31 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: Yeah, I'd prefer to just go with the extra apostrophe. T'ranu's greataxe, for example. I mean, it looks weird, but that's just the way it is, and doing it any other way is just too damn confusing.It works well with Seekers because the apostrophe is at the beginning of thier name, with male keepers their might be only one an "a" between them T'ranu's greataxe looks better then Xha'li's lance as the apostrophes are closer together in Xha'li's case.