It's all right (but not alright) to use a trailing apostrophe in the classical genetive
Carrying on from
the previous post, the copyedit style guide did resolve two of the greatest mysteries of the universe.
I wrote a blog post a couple of months ago asking whether ancient Greek and Roman names should have 's or only the trailing apostrophe in the possessive. This turned out to be quite controversial. The definitive answer is in the style guide, which says:
ancient classical names ending in "s" are set with a single apostrophe to form the possessive.
i.e. the correct possessive form is: Pericles' scroll
There you are; St Martin's Press says it, so it must be true. So now everything's all right, but it's not alright.
My long term readers will be amused to hear Copyeditor meticulously replaced every alright with all right.
I'll have to admit defeat on that front. I promise to write only all right from now on. But I'm going to sob quietly as I do the global replace on books 2 and 3.
I wrote a blog post a couple of months ago asking whether ancient Greek and Roman names should have 's or only the trailing apostrophe in the possessive. This turned out to be quite controversial. The definitive answer is in the style guide, which says:
ancient classical names ending in "s" are set with a single apostrophe to form the possessive.
i.e. the correct possessive form is: Pericles' scroll
There you are; St Martin's Press says it, so it must be true. So now everything's all right, but it's not alright.
My long term readers will be amused to hear Copyeditor meticulously replaced every alright with all right.
I'll have to admit defeat on that front. I promise to write only all right from now on. But I'm going to sob quietly as I do the global replace on books 2 and 3.