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The Times last fall reviewed a movie that dealt with “the Benders’s mock-tasteful household.” Not one person in 10,000 will read that as “the Bendersuz household.” What we hear is “the Benders’ household,” and I would punctuate it just that way. Does anyone really say, “the British Airwaysuz purchase”? “Williamsuz play”? “Sissionsuz future”?
Yet we do say “the Timesuz style,” so I go with “Times’s.” I like “Davis’s home.” The Chicago Manual decrees “General Nogues’s troops” and “Belioz’s opera.” I would recommend the apostrophe only. I ask you to read aloud, “Vaucouleurs’s theorems.” Which falls more trippingly from the tongue, “Vaucouleurs”’ or “Vaucouleurs’s”?
On to something else: How should we punctuate a double possessive? USA Today reported in January that Tyrone Ford “had been a supporter of Marion Berry’s during the former mayor’s drug trial.” That same day USA Today identified Laura Anthony as “a college classmate of Hillary Clinton’s.” But USA Today also had identified Labor Secretary Robert Reich as “a close friend of Clinton.”
The New Your Times in January said that “journalists defy a friend of Bill at their own risk.” On another occasion, thb Times spoke of a party ' arranged by a friend of Mr. Brown.”
The editor of Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage prefers the apostrophe-s, i.e., “a friend of Mr. Brown’s.” My own vote goes to the Times style: “a friend of Bill.” Whenever I see “a friend of Bill’s,” I want to ask, Bill’s what? A friend of Bill’s
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