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Confusing Possessives Revisited
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As the second Sunday in May approaches, many of you may be wondering how to write the
name of the holiday—is it Mother’s Day, Mothers’ Day,
or Mothers Day? We first looked into the topic of where to properly
place holiday apostrophes in a 2008 newsletter.
Today we provide an update.
The Chicago Manual of Style
and The Associated Press Stylebook list the following holidays as
singular possessives: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, New
Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day. CMOS uses plural possessive for Presidents’ Day, while AP Style writes Presidents Day. Both agree on no apostrophe in Veterans Day.
Your guess is as good as anyone’s about Secretary’s vs.
Secretaries’ vs. Secretaries Day and Boss’s vs. Bosses’
vs. Bosses Day.
What would you do if we had a Children’s Day holiday? Because Children is an irregular plural (not formed by adding an s or es), you would have to use the apostrophe in the
title because there is no such word as Childrens.
Example:
Children’s Hospital
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Wordplay
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English In A Snap:
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Learn all about who and whom, affect and effect, subjects and verbs, adjectives and adverbs, commas, semicolons, quotation marks, and much more by just sitting back and enjoying these easy-to-follow lessons. Tell your colleagues (and boss), children, teachers, and friends. Click here to watch.
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