The rest is sibilance.

So how did I get onto Mrs. Grimsdyke?

(With a fork-lift truck. Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!)

But I digress . . . No, it was back when in the comments to an earlier post, I mentioned Gene Wilder's movie The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. And I noticed the possessive.

My Mrs. Grimsdyke was probably a man. (I don't mean she was a cross-dresser; I went to a boys' high school and the masters were all men. Well, they wouldn't be masters if they weren't. Although we did once have a substitute math teacher who was a hundred-year-old woman who made us call her "ma'am.") My vagueness is only because I don't remember which particular English teacher taught us how to form the possessive of word ending in 's.'

(Shout out here to my tenth-grade teacher, Robin MacGibbon, who's the reason why I'm a writer now.)

I learned all those arcane rules about adding the apostrophe only, for both plurals and words with an s-sound at the end -- the boys' bedroom, Dickens' Bleak House, Vaughan Williams' "London" Symphony, Shakespeare's sonnet "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." And naturally, like a good little acolyte, I would defend this to the death.

But one day, I defected. (That's defected.) Because I realized the people who added an apostrophe 's' to all names weren't acting out of a pathetic ignorance of the English language. (Or to put it another way, they weren't just being American.) This was actually an alternative rule, constantly and consistently applied. And -- shades of St. Paul on the road to Damascus -- it suddenly made sense.

Take, for example, a restaurant I used to go to a lot in Greenwich Village, called "Gus's Place." If you used my classical form of punctuation, it would be "Gus' Place," which you'd have to pronounce "GUSS PLACE." But nobody does. They all say "GUSSIZ PLACE." And it's ludicrous to write it one way and say it another. Gus already knows this.

So I dumped my crumbling belief -- noblesse oblige -- and from now on, all plurals get an apostrophe only, but all names and singular words ending with the 's' or 'z' sound get an apostrophe plus an 's.' Simple.

And I immediately had one of those encounters of the Grimsdyke kind with a fellow mother at the local elementary school, who still espoused the classical approach and claimed her authority from the fact that her child had two names that ended sibilantically. (Just made that word up.) Say the kid was called Chris Ferris. She said it would therefore be "Chris' recent arrest," "Chris Ferris' juvy record."  Yeah, but you're saying CHRISSIZ, for Chrissiz sake, I diplomatically explain, so write it that way. I was met with the blank stare of the undeprogrammed cult member.

Here's why I like the alternative rule. It reflects widespread general usage. And it can be used without ambiguity and almost without exception. Some people say we still have to apply the old rule occasionally to deal with the odd tongue-twister. I don't think "Aristophanes's The Wasps" (ARISTOPHANEEZES) or "Socrates's legacy" (SOCRATEEZES) is that hard to say, but I'll defer.

They key thing, as the Hatter might have accepted it, is to say what you mean, and then write what you say.

Good night, Mrs. Grimsdyke, wherever you are.

You remember Mrs. Grimsdyke, right? She was the sixth-grade English teacher who hammered into you all you ever needed to know about grammar and punctuation. And she spoke with the infallibility of the Pope. The Grimsdyke way was the only way.

Mrs. Grimsdyke was like that founder* of the Jesuits, who may have claimed that indoctrinating a child for his first seven years was enough to win him for life. I've worn one of my hats -- corporate communicator -- for thirty years. And it constantly amazes me that senior managers, lords and ladies of their profession, can peruse a draft of some communication that may be of earth-shattering significance to the future of their business, and yet the only comment I'll get is "I was always taught not to begin a sentence with a conjunction." (Oh yeah? Try reading Chapter 1 of Genesis some time.)

When I'm hired to work on a project for a client, I make it clear that my ultimate loyalty is to the reader. I'm getting paid to make the materials I write as clear, as concise, and as friendly as possible. An informal, conversational tone promotes understanding, which saves the rampant cost of misunderstanding. At a more subtle level, it also diminishes the distance between the (supposed) author and the reader, enhancing the credibility of the message. It's my job to convince the client -- well, the client's lawyer -- that "It is imperative that the employee submit his/her claim for any loss in a timely fashion" doesn't change its meaning when it becomes "Don't wait too long to send in your claim." Never mind that it has a contraction and seems to be in the second person.

I had a client pay me to work my magic on a complete range of informational materials for his company's employees. And then the same client paid me all over again to remove every contraction -- every "don't" became a "do not," every "you're" a "you are"  -- simply because the CEO "had always believed" that contractions were incorrect in a business letter. Protests that I wasn't writing a business letter fell on deaf ears. So I apply the Beechey doctrine. I try to persuade them twice to do things my way. And then I do it their way with a clean conscience.

Language is a moving target. What's right versus what's wrong can often be what's new versus what's old. Although neither of these should be confused with what's good versus what's bad.

That doesn't imply an anything-goes free-for-all, embracing every faddish abbreviation or misspelling with uncritical glee. (To the end of my days, I will spell "all right" as two words, even if "alright" makes it into a dictionary.) Writers should know grammar backwards and forwards, just as they should know the ins and outs of their word processing program. These are the tools of the trade, and it's ludicrous for any professional to take pride in, say, scattering commas by guesswork or "where they feel right."

But an exploration of the basics quickly leads you into the current areas of controversy. And you discover that there are nuances, shades of gray, competing rules -- a world beyond the unbending grammatical celibacy of the Grimsdykes.

Maybe formal writing hasn't actually changed that much. Maybe what's changed is that excessive formality is now marginalized. I remember those ancient rules about whether to use "yours sincerely" or "yours faithfully" to sign off a business letter. But I never use either these days -- it's usually "best wishes" or even "love." I mean, why not?

So take a stand on the controversies. Stick to your position. Draw a line in the sand and be prepared to defend it. Just equip yourself with a better argument than "that's what I was taught in grade school."

*I've seen this apocryphal quote variously attributed to Ignatius Loyola or to his disciple and co-founder of the Society of Jesus, Francis Xavier. I once saw the "incorruptible" remains of Francis Xavier in a church in Goa, India. Or at least the bits that weren't collected by souvenir hunters -- his forearm's in Rome and another arm-bone is in Macau.