Friday, January 11, 2008

Pesky Plurals of Proper Nouns

from Ruge Rules




The Rule: To form the plural of a proper noun (regardless of what letter it ends in), simply add s or es.


Never form the plural by adding an apostrophe and then an s.


So: Let's take a family named Hardy.


Wrong: The Hardies are having a party.
Wrong: The Hardy's are having a party.
Right: The Hardys are having a party
Right: The Hardys' house is the last one on the right. (Note the possessive plural of Hardy.)


Or: a family named Jones.



Wrong: The Jones's are having a party.
Right: The Joneses are having a party
Right: The Joneses' house is the last one on the right. (Note the possessive plural of Jones.)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

There is a slight exception to this rule - it is when the proper noun ends in an 'S' and is preceded by a consonant

In such cases, no extra 's' is needed to pluralise; it remains simply 'Richards'
So you would say "we have the Richards coming over at noon" and not "the Richardses"

Mind you, such rules aren't commonly known or understood by native English speakers anyway, so you can usually get away with whatever you want :-D

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