The BBC has had it Cumming

The apostrophe can be a bugger at the best of times but plurals or names ending with an S often confuse people the most.

As usual, the BBC gives us a perfect example of how not to do it.

Even the BBC should know by now that the guy’s name is Cummings. Heck, they even write it that way in this caption seven words earlier. So when you talk about his appearance at a committee you need to put an apostrophe at the end of his name. You can even add another S on if you like, so you can say Cummings’s… but Cummings’ on its own looks less clumsy.

The one thing that you should definitely not write is Cumming’s because that would make his surname Cumming… and that would kick up a whole different scenario in your search engine.

#languagematters #journalismmatters