Published 4/26/07
 

There is the story of the Texas regional railroad official who wired his home office in New York requesting a new caboose. Only he needed two of them, and wasn’t sure how to spell the message without looking stupid to his colleagues back East. What is plural for caboose? Cabooses? Caboosi? Cabeese? What if the rail cars need to bring along something? What’s the possessive? Cabooses’s?­ So he wrote, “Please send me one caboose, and while you’re at it, please send a second.” 

All of which brings us to the correct spelling and pronunciation of Texas in the pluperfect past potential possessive. Is it spelled Texas’ or Texas’s ? Or maybe Texases? You and I have not given this a lot of thought, what with Don Imusese’s career going south, but perhaps we should. If Texas owns something — a quarterback or off-shore drilling rights or maybe a book — how do we write and speak of our state? So if possession is nine-tenths’s’s’ of the law, what’s the law? I’ll explain in a minute why we should care. 

The New York Times’ (Times’s?) style for this particular possessive form is Texas’s, with an s after the apostrophe. Well, it’s their style some of the time. These two items ran last week in the same story: “... TXU Corp., Texas’ largest power company ...” And, “Citing a rise in electricity prices in Texas’s deregulated market ...” One more: “Texas’s Senate has passed a bill ...” Make up your mind, Gray Lady. 

The Washington Post can’t decide, either. The headline reads: “Texas’s Johnson Is in Position.” The article: beneath it reads: “But one player at the position who has the league’s talent evaluators excited is Texas linebacker Derrick Johnson ...” No nothing. Even here in the Lone Star State we can’t agree. The Web site of — hang on, big title — The University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio features Texas’s Anglo-Americans. Click on it and you get Texas’ Anglo-Americans.
Our reason for this sudden interest in the proper possessive state of our state is because right on our doorstep — the back doorstep — the Arkansas Legislature is debating the “Arkansas’s apostrophe act.” Rep. Steve Harrelson has filed a resolution to declare the correct possessive form of the state as “Arkansas’s.” The resolution carries no legal weight, and would not affect Arkansans’ use of apostrophes in Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts or Texas.

According to news reports, “with English, French and Dutch explorers passing through the state, the state at different times was spelled 70 different ways and pronounced 70 different ways in its early history.” After Arkansas became a state, the news article continues, confusion remained on its spelling and its pronunciation, as many maps from the time spelled it without its final “s.” A resolution by the Legislature in 1881 formalized its current spelling and pronunciation, making its final “s” silent.

A silent s? If our own Legislature in Austin decreed we should not pronounce the final s of our state, we would go around calling this place Texa. (And, please, no dumb jokes about we don’t know our s. This is a high-brow column written only for members of MENSA. Give me the secret handshake). 

Rules on forming possessives can be confusing. The current Associated Press Stylebook says singular proper names ending in ‘s’ — such as Texas — should only have an apostrophe. But my Associated Press Stylebook (it’s a little old) says on Page XXVII: “Singular proper nouns ending in S: Add ‘s unless the next word begins with s; the hostess’s invitation, the hostess’ seat.” Now that gets complicated. So we have: Texas’s predicament (add the apostrophe and the s), but Texas’ situation (no extra s).    

How about New Years Day? Is it actually New Year’s Day? I’ve seen it written both ways. The Dallas Cowboys, but Dallas’s Cowboys? The Eyes’ of Texas? Days’ of Our Lives? In London there is St. James’s Palace where the royals hang out. But there is also the Court of St. James’s, which is the popular name of the royal court of the UK. Since the title contains an “of” — meaning possession — do the Brits really need that extra ‘s at the end? Do we say, “This is the son of John Jones’s? Of course not. Keeping up with the Joneses is hard enough, but if the family owns something, is the proper word Joneses’s? 

Now we get really tricky. How do we pronounce these words? If, as noted, we don’t pronounce the final s in Arkansas along with Illinois, we don’t say Massachusett or Kansa. Then again, we don’t even pronounce our happy home correctly. It is spelled Texas, but we pronounce it TECK-siz. Anyone who went around singing “Deep in the Heart of TECK-az” would be put on the next stage to Arkansassss.
This, sort of, brings us to grits, the edible kind, not True Grit. Can we have one grit? In Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes,” a Southern belle complains to her retainer, “The grits is cold.” She was a woman of style, not some Southern white trash (and most of them don’t have retainers­). So we must assume she knew her grammar. Could the grits possess cold? Gritses’? 

We must solve the possessive problem ourselves, as usual. The Bible for Texanna is the Handbook of Texas, a massive compilation of anything and everything to do with the Lone Star State. It uses Texas’s 55 times — “Texas’s contribution to the Women’s Basketball ...” and “The value of Texas’s spinach crop ...” For the use of Texas’ without the double and final s, the Handbook lists an even 2,000 times.
So while you are waiting for your income tax refund because of the Peace Dividend, contemplate just how we should spell the name of our beloved home. And while you’re at it, please send a second one.

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