December 2021

View our original newsletter here: Plurals and Apostrophes in Last Names

Are we The Jones's, The Jones', or The Joneses? A Guide to Plurals and Apostrophes in Last Names

Getting your holiday cards prepped and ready to send to your family, friends, and loved ones? Struggling with how to sign off as a family?

Should you include an apostrophe in your last name, like

"Love the Jones's", or should you skip the apostrophe altogether?

We share tips, resources and information about plurals and apostrophes with last names in our recap of December!

Holiday cards, thank you notes, wedding invitations, and other messages sent through the mail are tough for oh so many reasons. One reason is planning, we have to think about our writing before we actually start writing, so we need plenty of time to get these things done...Another reason these notes are so difficult is grammar.

Quick Tip: Since your holiday card is from the individuals that are in your family, don't add an apostrophe. Just add s.

Don't Just Take Our Word For It

See what other industry experts are saying about plurals and apostrophes in last names...

How to Make Your Last Name Plural This Christmas Season

"Nothing quells my Christmas cheer as quickly as a stray apostrophe. Every year they assault me....I find a stack of Christmas cards and begin to flip through them—pausing to marvel at how big so-and-so’s kids have gotten. And then I spot it: an apostrophe in a last name that isn’t supposed to be possessive..."

How to Make Your Last Name Plural

"'Happy holidays from the Smith's!' Can you spot the grammatical error here? We've all committed this common punctuation mistake when making last names plural—and it's even easier to make now in the era of autocorrect..."

Check out this great visual guide to help you determine how to sign-off on your holiday cards!

Go Further

Want to know where we got this tip? A variety of resources. But the book The Accidental Apostrophe: . . . And Other Misadventures in Punctuation by Caroline Taggart gives some great information about all things apostrophes and punctuation.

“In Roman times, blocks of text were written without even wordspacingnevermindpunctuation. Orators would prepare carefully so that they didn’t get confused between, say, therapists and the rapists. As we entered the Christian era, it became more important to remove any likelihood of misinterpretation. For example, "If you are tempted, yield not, resisting the urge to commit a sin" vs. "If you are tempted, yield, not resisting the urge to commit a sin." So yes, punctuation does matter, and it is there to help—to clarify meaning, to convey emphasis, to indicate that you are asking a question or quoting someone else’s words. Caroline Taggart points out what matters and what doesn’t; why using six exclamation marks where one will do is fine in a text but not at school; why hang glider pilots in training really need a hyphen; and how throwing in the odd semicolon will impress your friends. This is an ideal guide to the (perceived) minefield that is punctuation."

Quote of the Month

“To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as 'Thank God its Friday' (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive 'its' (no apostrophe) with the contractive 'it's' (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian 'kill' response in the average stickler.” 

― Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation