Apostrophe Pedants

[WigWamBam]

I saw this notice this morning, in an art shop window above a display of canvases:

Other size's of canva's available.

Isn't it ghastly?

Actually you're right of course, you can use either, but Ellis's plays more by the rules I feel, so less confusing for the lad.

Ellis' is also correct though. It's the way I was taught, and it still seems to be taught that way here; my dd's nursery school have boards labelled "Mrs Lewis' family" and "Miss Dickens' family".

I thought that if the word had more than one syllable, it was Ellis' and if it had one syllable, it was Jones's? Could have made that up entirely though.

I think it would be easier just to change Ellis' name

in eats, shoots and leaves, lynn truss states the following:

"Current guides to punctuation state that with modern names ending in "s", the "s" is required after the apostrophe:

Keats's poems
Philippa Jones's book

With names from the ancient world it is not:

Archimedes' screw
Achilles' heel

If the name ends in an "iz" sound, an exception is made:

Bridges' score
Moses' basket

And, and exception is always made for Jesus:

Jesus' disciples.

However, these are matters of style and preference that are definitel not set in stone, and it's a good idea not to get fixated about them.... Consulting a dozen or so recently published punctuation guides, I can report that they contain minor disagreements on virtually all aspects of the above."

So... it would seem that there are no actual set rules about the use of the apostrophe in this context. Which is rather good because it means you can never get it wrong!