Having spent hours looking up a rule of punctuation, I’m giving up and turning to you, smart and learned readers.
The question is: How does one punctuate the possessive form of a name that is already possessive? Put another way, when the name of a store or a church is possessive—ending in apostrophe-s—and is used in the possessive, is a second apostrophe added? How about another s, while we’re at it?
Here’s an example: The name of the store is Trader Joe’s. I want to refer to their produce. If I say “Trader Joe’s produce is always fresh,” that appears to refer to the produce of one man, Trader Joe. It would make sense to write, “Trader Joe’s’ produce is always fresh,” but we all know English does not always make sense. And that second apostrophe looks like a second thumb on one hand.
Here’s another example: Say St. Michael’s Catholic Church, familiarly called “St. Michael’s,” has a website. Would we refer to it as “St. Michael’s website?” If so, would that not imply that St. Michael himself had a website?
As I said, I’ve looked high and low for the answer, in the collection of style guides that live on my shelves and on the Internet. There are volumes about the possessive of plural nouns, proper nouns and words ending in sibilants (I had to look up sibilant). When I found a tip about double possessives, I thought I was on to something, but it had nothing to do with my question.
Please don’t suggest I flip it around. “The nuts at Trader Joe’s” would be cheating and I’d like to crack this one.
It looks as though the person who named the film The Bells of St. Mary’s took the easy way out.
Jury rigged? Hmm. I didn’t know that, but later learned that jury rigging (no Casey Anthony jokes) is a sailing term.
It goes on to explain that “the adjectival use of ‘jury’ in the sense of makeshift or temporary dates from at least 1616, when it appeared in John Smith’s A Description of New England” and lays out 
Urban Dictionary explains that “jerry” has come to refer to something that is bad or defective: “a pejorative use of the male nickname Jerry.” Jerry as a pejorative? I didn’t know this either; did you?
All the while I was poring over these contemporary sources, what was really lingering in the back of my mind was Michael Jackson’s 1980s jeri curl.
This 9th century bishop of Winchester and patron saint of the Winchester Cathedral became a saint for working a miracle, as saints do. His had something to do with eggs. I can’t find many details about that either. But that’s not what his feast day is known for.
For those who don’t recognize it by name, the em (as in the letter m, also used as a measurement of print space) dash is the longer of two kinds of dashes, formed in type by typing two consecutive dashes on the keyboard, without any space on either end. In most word processing programs, it doesn’t appear until you type a space after the word following the em dash. It’s fun; try it. (Brockaway cautions her readers to not do it this way; however, my attempt at her suggested computer command fails.)
Word Girl is a 10-year-old super-powered alien who apprehends villains in her quest to educate her following of 6-to 12-year olds to “power up with power words.” From what I gather, she also likes to ask kids what their favorite words are. What’s not to like?
Todays’ question:
Today’s question:
Today’s question:
Word Nymph 