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This is exactly what I am trying to establish to improve my bumpy English. My best guess is that the correct form is "Brooks's" because (1) "Brooks" is a singular noun ending with an "s" and (2) it is not a classic neither religious name. If you claim it should be "Brooks'" I am ok with this as long as you give me a sensible explanation.



There's not exactly a consensus these days on what is correct. Either is valid, but I generally prefer _Brooks' Law_ to _Brooks's Law_ since it looks more clean. Of course, Brook's Law is incorrect, as there is no "Brook"

Here's an example of the lack of consensus:

Either is acceptable: https://data.grammarbook.com/blog/apostrophes/apostrophes-wi... https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/punctuation/apost...

Chicago vs AP style: https://apvschicago.com/2011/06/apostrophe-s-vs-apostrophe-f...

APA style suggests appending the extra 's': https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/06/forming-possessiv...


So, the usual clusterf*k of opinions instead of a clear spec. People should be speaking SQL.

Thanks for the links. Plenty of educational value there!


> So, the usual clusterf*k of opinions instead of a clear spec. People should be speaking SQL.

Because that would be an improvement, or not much of a change?


Sorry, forgot to set the Sarcasm New Roman font again!


Honestly, it's more amusing for the ambiguity :)


Native English speaker, from England, and we were explicitly taught to use Brooks' rather than Brooks's.

However that didn't stop the Beatles from using "In an Octopus's Garden" as a song title. (Note that the song is about a single Octopus). I would suggest that it depends on whether you intend to explicitly repeat the 's' when speaking.

Plurals of words ending with an 's' are an occasional minefield. You sometimes hear people smugly insist that the plural of Octopus should be Octopi, only to have someone even more smugly point out that Octopus is from Greek, not Latin, and so it should be Octopodes. Meanwhile the rest of us just continue to use Octopuses....


In the US - I've always understood it to have something to do with pluralization, along the lines of:

* One river's fish.

* Jesus's fish.

* Many rivers exist.

* Many rivers' fish.

The name "Brooks" unfortunately fits both the second and fourth of these examples, making it even weirder.




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