GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 314901
Incorrect Usage of Apostrophe in Home Link
Last modified: 2005-10-04 21:17:24 UTC
Distribution/Version: Fedora Core 4 Reproduction: Create a Unix system username, chris. Log in to Gnome. See the desktop icon, "Chris's Home." This is incorrect and has always annoyed me in any O/S. It should read "Chris' Home," not "Chris's Home" because our language defines the rule which is true for any name that ends with the letter, s.
Thanks for your bug report! Considering our big userbase in english-speaking countries, I think it's worth to special-case this occurence.
Created attachment 51602 [details] [review] Proposed patch.
Updating bug information.
Actually, "Chris's Home" is correct, according to the Chicago Manual of Style. The lone trailing apostrophe is only for plurals ending with an s sound, and a few special cases.
Thanks for pointing this out Shaun. From Wikipedia [1]: "If a name already ends with an s, the extra s is sometimes dropped: Jesus' parables. This is more common in U.S. usage and with classical names (Eros' statue, Herodotus' book). Additionally, many contemporary names that end with -es (a -z sound) will see the extra s dropped by some writers: Charles' car, though most style guides advocate Charles's car." Resolving as NOTABUG. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe_%28mark%29