How many ss does it take to change a lightbulb?

[ritaxis]

[Poll #1088629]

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I think "Tomas" is a person and "the boss" is a thing, even if the latter is capitalized. I would not omit the ess from "the national press's reaction", to make "the national press' reaction", because there's a "the" there. But if you were to write of a character called "Press", then the only reason I would not go with "Press' wishes" is that "Press" has one syllable.

If the character were "Parris" I would totally say "Parris' wishes", but I would not say "the local parish' rules", it would be "the local parish's rules".

If your "Tomas" had a line of robots named after him, I would change "Tomas' wishes" to "the Tomas's programming". The "the" would trump the name for me.

So, my personal rule, omit the final ess only where the name ends with ess, has more than one syllable, and is a *proper* noun—that is, a real name.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

That would work if we were speakers of Mixtec, yes.