The top of the Democratic ticket—having candidates with sibilants at the ends of their names—is causing some predictable confusion. But behind the scenes, it’s highlighting an editorial anomaly in the AP Stylebook (followed by many newspapers), which specifies these results:
- Harris’ views
- Walz’s views
In a single sentence, we get Harris’ as a possessive but Walz’s.
The better policy, followed by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, is to reject the AP rule on this point and to follow instead the rule specified by The Chicago Manual of Style (followed by most book publishers). Just add ’s to any singular noun to make the possessive:
- Harris’s views
- Walz’s views
A sensible result. Yet that’s only the beginning. The plural possessives by either system must be these:
- the Harrises’ house
- the Walzes’ house
We trust that the Harrises and the Walzes follow these rules.
By the way, there’s an age-old question if you follow AP’s possessive rule. How do you pronounce Harris’ views? Do you say it as if there were an extra s after the apostrophe? Or do you say it the way it looks? That’s still another reason to favor the Chicago rule: what you see is what you get.