Kamala Harris and the Apostrophe S

Which is it: “Harris’ record” or “Harris’s record”? The answer is obvious

We’re all pleased—well, those of us of a certain political persuasion are pleased — that Vice President Joe Biden picked Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. First off, for those of you who don’t know, the California senator’s given name is pronounced “calm-a-la,” though some have argued that it’s “comma-la.” I prefer “calm-a-la,” which everyone seems to use anyway without any complaint from her. Fine. But I’m here today to address another issue — an annoyance, frankly: how her last name in the possessive case is often rendered in print.

Take a look at these four examples:

From HuffPost: “…Wallace said, referring to Harris’ grilling of the attorney general during a Senate hearing last year.”

From Politico: “Kelly Mehlenbacher, who worked on operations for Kamala Harris’ presidential bid…”

From Reason: “…so it appears we are once again litigating Harris’ record as a prosecutor.”

From Slate: “Kamala Harris’ Indian American identity is finally in the spotlight.”

Now, take a look at these four:

From The Atlantic: “Harris’s nomination is historic.”

From The New York Times: “Kamala Harris’s first act as a political candidate was knocking out a former boxer.”

From The New Yorker: “It makes sense that the news of Harris’s nomination arrived by text.”

From Vox: “A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions.”

Doesn’t Harris’ look like a typo? It does to me. After all, there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and if you want to indicate the singular possessive case for a noun or person’s name that ends with any of these letters, you add an apostrophe s at the end. This gives you a child’s homework or a dog’s bone or a lawyer’s argument. Benjamin Dreyer, in his book Dreyer’s English, writes that the same rule applies for a word that ends with an s: the boss’s office and the princess’s tiara, noting as well that this is “the no-brainer way to go.”

In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White have this to say:

Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding ’s. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant: Charles’s friend, Burns’s poems, the witch’s malice.

Fine. They go on to say that “exceptions are the possessive of ancient proper names ending in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus’, and such forms as for conscience’ sake, for righteousness’ sake.” Never mind the latter two items, as my focus here is with names in the singular possessive case. “But dropping the s is what I was taught to do.” Yes, people were taught to do that — for the plural possessive case: the kittens’ toys, for example. But somewhere along the line, many people began to drop the s for the singular possessive case — and then some style guides for reporters and journalists ran with this misunderstanding. Not only did they run with this, an irrational concern about sibilance was invented as an excuse to drop the s.

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage suggests omitting the s “when a word ends in two sibilant sounds (the ch, j, s, sh, ts, or z sounds) separated only by a vowel sound: Kansas’ Governor; Texas’ population; Moses’ behalf.” Really? I’m supposed to keep track of how a word sounds when deciding whether or not to use an apostrophe s? What kind of madness is this? It makes no sense to drop the apostrophe s for print or for screen when it’s fact that people say the apostrophe s. This business of dropping the s isn’t just for certain periodicals. James Cochrane, a Penguin Books editor and author of Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English, also wants to make certain exceptions for the dropped s: for Jesus, Moses, and Ulysses.

If editors at publications that drop the apostrophe s believe that sound should be a guiding light, I would ask them to say this out loud: “Socrates’s philosophy,” which, when the last bit is rendered phonetically, looks like “Socrates-izz philosophy.” That “-izz” you hear yourself saying is a phonetic stand-in for the s that follows the apostrophe. More: If you say “Ricky Gervais-izz” comedy (and you do), then “Ricky Gervais’s comedy” should appear on the page or screen — and on chyrons (I’m talking to you, CNN and MSNBC). A rule designed for all the letters in the alphabet should be applied everywhere, whether it’s Lennon’s guitar, McCartney’s harmony, or DeSantis’s human trafficking. (Okay, I can think some idiomatic exceptions, one from ordinary language: for goodness’ sake, and one from the Bible: “But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake.”)

Think of another rule we have in English: capitalizing words that begin a sentence. Are there any exceptions to this? I can think of one: the writer bell hooks. That was Gloria Jean Watkins’s pen name, and she always wanted it to appear in lowercase even if “bell hooks” began a sentence. So the rule holds: Apart from rare exceptions — extremely rare, as far as I know (“eBay” and “iPhone”) — words that begin a sentence should be capitalized. And if there’s another rule that says all singular words in the possessive case end with an apostrophe s — the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas — it follows that the rule should be applied to all the letters in the alphabet (with the exception of the rare examples noted above). So, contrary to James Cochrane’s eccentricity, I will add an apostrophe s nearly everywhere — and certainly to any name that ends with an s: Jesus’s sermons, Moses’s mother, and Kamala Harris’s record. It’s a no-brainer, right?

P.S. August 16, 2024. It looks like the Harris/Walz campaign does not want to get with the program:

P.S. P.S. August 24, 2024. The Associated Press recently posted a piece with this title: “There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?” What’s funny, but not in a ha-ha way, is that the AP has long served as a go-to source for many reporters and journalists — and they support dropping the s. But get this: An AP editor who saw my piece said she agrees with me but that she’s in no position to get her company to change its ways. My recommendation to all writers: Ignore what the AP says (on this issue, at least) and stick with what Benjamin Dreyer, the former copy chief at Random House, has to say:

Barry Lyons is a freelance writer living in New York City. Here’s his list of words and phrases that annoy him.