St Thomas' Hospital or St Thomas's Hospital?
In the comments to a previous post, reader katypea asks the following:
“St. Thomas’ Hospital” (as per the directional signage around Waterloo) or “St. Thomas’s Hospital” (as per my sheer editorial common sense). Please tell me i won the arguement with The Boyfriend last night…?
It’s an apostrophe question many people struggle with, so I thought my answer warranted a post of its own.
The rule is simple: use 's if you pronounce the second s, but just add the apostrophe on its own if you don't.
For example, when I worked as a writer at UBS I might easily have written a sentence like this:
Huw Jenkins' appointment as the CEO of UBS's investment banking division was announced last night.
So yes, katypea, your editorial good sense was correct. If you fancy launching a campaign to have the signs changed, I'm in. Just watch how you spell “argument”!
Let me restate my rule number one for apostrophes: never, ever add ’s to the end of a word just to make it plural.