Forum:That dearest of topics: Naming convention

Something was brought to my attention today, and that was through the move of "Ulysses' Temple" to "Ulysses' temple". Now at this point you are most likely presuming I have an issue with the Cap policy, but if so you are wrong. The thing bugging me is in fact the grammar of the apostrophe.

One might have, if they were young, have put Ulysses's temple, and would no doubt be rebuked by their teacher for doing so due to the word ending in an s and therefore shifting the apostrophe to the end of the word. However, the issue is that this is what is wrong. The shift should not occur due to the fact that the word ends in an s, but rather that the word is a plural and ends in s.

Now, as most of you will have figured out now, names are not plural and so you are no doubt thinking surely it doesn't apply to names and they are -s'? Alas, no, and very few people are aware of this in fact. The fact that a name is singular overrides if it ends in an s. The problem then, is that Ulysses' temple is incorrect.

However, I am not demanding a change in policy, but only asking that you consider the correction. The reason for this rebuttal is that over the years, this common misconception has actually been the grammatical rule taught by ignorant teachers and now is often dismissed as stylistic difference, and is becoming acceptable because as you are no doubt aware, no-one writes down rules on English grammar ;) (okay, people have, but still not officially...)

Then again, we will also need to account for the 'awkward' ones where an extra syllable might make it sound clumsy. To use a classical example in theme with Ulysses (Odysseus), Achilles' heel is generally accepted due to the way it sounds... i.e. Achilles's heel, though correct, just doesn't sound right.

"I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it."

- Carl Sandburg

Useful link

 * Good ol' wikipedia

Comments
Well, we use the ingame spelling (except for capitalization), so I suppose you'd have to direct your "ire" at Bethesda/Obsidian :P -- Porter21 (talk) 15:45, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * But if we decided the capitalisation wasn't right for us, why not the apostrophes? In fairness though, I wasn't aware that that was the in-game spelling, and I've seen it is now. Φύλαξ [~μίλησε μου~] 21:59, 18 March 2012 (UTC)