How can I get the possessive form of a noun?

Question

Here's an algorithm for adding an apostrophe to a given input noun.

How would you contruct a string to show ownership?

/**
 * apostrophizes the string properly
 * <pre>
 * curtis = curtis'
 * shaun = shaun's
 * </pre>
 *
 * @param input string to apostrophize
 * @return apostrophized string or empty string if the input was empty or null.
 */
public static String apostrophize(String input) {
    if (isEmpty(input)) return "";

    if ("s".equalsIgnoreCase(StringUtils.right(input,1))) {
        return input + "'";
    } else {
        return input + "'s";
    }
}

Answer 1

No, this is not grammatically correct. Curtis's is the correct way to say that something belongs to Curtis, since Curtis is singular. If a noun is plural you would using the trailing apostrophe to indicate the possessive.

Edit: Shaun, in my most humble opinion as person with experience as a writer and editor of the English language as well as a programmer, I don't feel that there is any easy answer to this problem. I do not feel that it is correct to write "Curtis'" to express the possessive, and I also feel that there is widespread -- though not universal -- agreement on the subject.

The real work of any algorithmic approach to solving this problem is determining whether or not the noun is singular or plural, and that is an exceedingly difficult problem to solve, one that is well beyond the scope of a StackOverflow answer. Best of luck to you.

Answer 2

For what it's worth, take a look at:

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2008_style_manual&docid=f:chapter8.pdf

Codify that and you have yourself a fairly good algorithm for encoding apostrophes.

Answer 3

How would you construct a string to show ownership?

The alternatives are:

• Avoid the problem by avoiding the need to generate a possessive for some arbitrary word or name. This is what I would do ... unless I was feeling masochistic.

• Do a simple job of it that will (inevitably) result in English that fails the "good style" test in some cases. And be prepared to deflect complaints from the endless stream of dingbats who have nothing better to do with their time than complain about bad style / grammar.

• Spend a long time building infrastructure that is capable of analysing words into singular / plural, regular noun / proper noun, etc, etc. Then implement the style rules according to the syntactic / semantic analysis of the text you are generating. (And then repeat the entire process for each natural language your website ... or whatever ... needs to support.)

Answer 4

The reversed form is more stable

 String.Format("The {1} of {0}", owner, item);