Silas Kopf allegedly is running for mayor of Northampton on the “Grammarian Party” ticket. Kopf claims that Thornes, the prominent Main Street store, is missing an apostrophe.
Indeed, in the photograph accompanying the Gazette story about Kopf announcing his candidacy, he is holding the alleged missing apostrophe between the “e” and the “s” in Thornes, thus — for the photo, anyway — changing the name on the façade to Thorne’s.
But Thorne’s is possessive for one Thorne. Not true! More than one Thorne started Thornes.
Kopf will probably place the blame elsewhere — like on the camera angle — for this snafu. What, a politician? Or, perhaps, What a politician!
Let’s give Silas the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he actually wanted the apostrophe at the end of the proper name: Thornes’. There you have it. A politician finally willing to speak truth to a building sign.
Maybe.
Thornes’ — with a simple apostrophe after the last letter “s”— would be Associated Press style. Newspapers use the A.P. style because it’s efficient and saves space, among other attributes.
But there is a self-appointed more luxurious style of grammar — the Chicago Manual of Style. The Chicago style does not simply stick an apostrophe at the end of a word that ends in an “s” but rather adds an apostrophe and a second “s” like any other word. Hence, Thornes’s. Pronounced, I assume, “Thornesezz.”
Which sounds pretty hip-hoppy to me. Something for the cool kids as well as the older, tweedy crowd. And Thornes is a pretty classy place, so it kind of works.
What say you, Silas?
Bill Newman
Northampton