Q. Would the phrase “The Board of Trustees meeting” be considered an attributive noun? Or should possession be indicated with an apostrophe? Thank you for your assistance.
A. Better to write “board of trustees’ meeting.” When it is a matter of drawing the line between the possessive (or genitive) form and the attributive (adjectival) form, CMOS generally sides with the former, adding the apostrophe unless there’s no possessive meaning or unless it is a matter of an official, published form that does not carry the apostrophe. See paragraph 7.27 for examples.
Q. I have suddenly become an editor and am having trouble on a daily basis with the numeric use of decades. First, is “the
90s” or “the ’90s” correct? We often
see the apostrophe omitted these days. Next, if a sentence contains the phrase, “Perhaps the 70s best
director . . .” (meaning, the best director of that decade),
“70s” is both plural and possessive. Should it be “70’s”?
“70s’”? Other than reconstructing the sentence, what’s
an editor to do?
A. Strictly speaking, ’90s, with the apostrophe, is correct.
The ’70s’ finest director was Martin Scorsese, particularly for his work on Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver.
Note the apostrophes, both of them. You are always free to write “seventies’ finest.”
Or, “The finest director of the ’70s was assuredly Francis Ford Coppola, for his
work on the first two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now.”
Q. When indicating possession of a word that ends in s, is it correct to repeat the s after using an apostrophe? For example, which is correct: “Dickens’ novel” or “Dickens’s novel”?
A. Either is correct, though we prefer the latter. Please consult CMOS 7.16–19 for a full discussion of the rules for forming the possessive of proper nouns. For a discussion of the alternative practice of simply adding an apostrophe to form the possessive of proper nouns ending in s, see paragraph 7.22.