Apostrophes

[menagerie]

Pedants would argue that the second s must go in, and to omit it is sloppy. It is, technically, Thomas's tea time. Out loud we'd say Thomas's, not Thaomas' so that pedantic second s is best kept in, imo.

The plurals of names that end in s take 'es'. As in: keeping up with the Joneses. But keeping up with the Joneses's dog as it raced across the grass sounds and looks so ugly that I'd say a pedant should lose out to elegance here.

[scary mum]

I'm finding all this very interesting because I would say "keeping up with the Joneses" but I would never have added an es on to ours. I wonder if it is because there is an consonant before the "s". For examples, if our surname was Woods (it's not!), would you say "keeping up with the Woodses? And if borrowing a book that belonged to all the Woods family would it be Woodses's? Aargh!

[Sally-Anne]

I'm finding all this very interesting because I would say "keeping up with the Joneses" but I would never have added an es on to ours. I wonder if it is because there is an consonant before the "s". For examples, if our surname was Woods (it's not!), would you say "keeping up with the Woodses? And if borrowing a book that belonged to all the Woods family would it be Woodses's? Aargh!

No - this would go back to the original rule (on my other thread) of " the Woods' "

"The Woods owned a number of books - they were the Woods' books."

[faitaccompli]

I'm finding all this very interesting because I would say "keeping up with the Joneses" but I would never have added an es on to ours. I wonder if it is because there is an consonant before the "s". For examples, if our surname was Woods (it's not!), would you say "keeping up with the Woodses? And if borrowing a book that belonged to all the Woods family would it be Woodses's? Aargh!

No - this would go back to the original rule (on my other thread) of " the Woods' "

"The Woods owned a number of books - they were the Woods' books."

Yes - that is what I would go for. Alternatively, I may well take the cowards way out and simply say "the books belonged to the Woods" ...

[scary mum]

Phew, that's what I would have done