Possessives and Attributives

Q. My boss has told me that our company name should not have an apostrophe+s after it in proposals, reports, or text, even in a possessive situation. Her primary stated reason was that “it is cumbersome.” I understand, if we are talking about “the BigFirm Stress Team.” But in an instance like “One of BigFirm past projects,” I do not think it makes sense. If the intent of the sentence is to express ownership, you need an indication of that, which should be done with ’s, correct? I would prefer to say that we should tend toward the use of the attributive (“the BigFirm Stress Team”) but that there are instances where it would be more correct to use the possessive, in which case, we would: “One of BigFirm’s greatest success stories.” What do you think?

A. I agree. The attributive does not work in every context. If you are forced to use only the attributive, then the syntax must be edited to accommodate it. If your boss refuses to budge on this, you might have to look into that BigFirm Stress Team.