On posses and possession: minding your own esses

There are a few spelling errors too minor to be worth their own Reminder among the 44 but yet sufficiently common to merit a short post. They have in common the difference in how American pronounce the letter “s” and how the words we have inherited from England use that same letter.

The most frequent problem is that associated with the possessive.

Let us say that Borges had a cat. He seems like the kind of writer likely to have had a cat, after all.

That cat is Borges’s cat—not, in conventional usage, “Borges’ cat.”

Likewise, the pen with which Dickens wrote Great Expectations is not Dickens’ pen nor, heaven forfend, Dicken’s pen; instead, the quill in question is Dickens’s pen.

There is one major exception to this rule that tends to flummox readers. For historical reasons I have never fully understood, classical figures—most famously Jesus—tend to form their possessive without the additional “s.” Ergo: Jesus’ hairdo; Socrates’ mustache.

(I hope Socrates didn’t have a mustache, though it must have been a nuisance to shave every morning with a straight razor.)

This problem tends to compound itself with Frederick Douglass.

Poor Frederick Douglass! He struggled for decades to teach himself to read and write and thereby to undermine the slave-holding system that was his life’s work to destroy, only to have the men and women who read his autobiography write about Douglass’ life or Douglas’s life (ick).

It is—it really is—Douglass’s life, and what a life it is!

One last note, and the one that set me off here. More than one of the essays I have had the opportunity to read this weekend use “posses” for “possess.” As in “This shoe is the finest that I possess.”

A posse is a gaggle of vigilantes set out to avenge some wrong, real or imagined. Remember the torch-and-pitchfork mob in Beauty and the Beast? Totally a posse.

If you have more than one posse you have 1) bad, bad news, and 2) posses.

If, on the other hand, you own something—a prized Pez dispenser, let’s say—that Pez dispenser is something you possess. If someone else owns it, that is an heirloom dispenser that she or he possesses.

Written in the style of a 44 Reminders quiz question, the appropriate sentence would go something like this:

“Douglass’s posse possesses Pez dispensers aplenty.”

Citing the sonnets in Essay 1

One of the nit-pickier problems in writing about Shakespeare’s sonnets lies in how you quote and cite them. Click here for a quick post explaining the rules.

Short notes on the pre-essay

There are no grades for the pre-essays, of course, there is something to be said for the impression they have given me of your power and skill as writers. The average hypothetical grade for the pre-essays was a high C, which is a wonderful place to start this course.

By now you should have received a link to a Google document with my comments about your pre-essay. There are three issues that didn’t make it into those notes because they applied to nearly everybody. I wanted to write about them here.

Issue 1: titles

The title is there for you to demonstrate that you can distill the core argument of your essay down to one line.

The most common style of essay title you’ll see in the higher levels of academia follows something like this:

“Quotation from the text”: Key analytical argument about Name of Text

For example, if Larry were to write an essay about today’s movie his title might go something like this:

“We better not alarm the girls”: Sexist colonialism in William Berke’s Jungle Jim

Issue 2: pronouns

Oh, those wily pronouns!

I am a bit startled by the number of pre-essays that deploy pronouns in unclear or confusing ways. If your essay ranks among this number, then here are three notes:

1. Pronouns should fit their antecedents tightly: A student should do her or his homework, and so on. Check out #42 of the 44 Reminders and Problem 38 in The Editing Book (page 55).
2. Avoid those infamous “it” phrases that aren’t attached to a specific noun—most infamously it seems and it appears. This is Problem 39 in The Editing Book (pages 56–7).
3. Pronouns do not carry across paragraph breaks. It’s kind of like crossing a river to escape a pack of hunting dogs: pronouns can’t smell their antecedents if there’s a paragraph break in between.

Issue 3: formatting

This is the easiest, and the pickiest.

Please do follow Larry’s formatting suggestions for these essays:

• 1-inch margins (Word defaults to 1.25-inch margins, so you’ll have to change them)
• 12-point Times New Roman (the new Word defaults to some bizarre sans-serif font; do, please, change it to TNR)
• Type your name, the date, and my name (not Larry’s) in the upper left-hand corner—this is a change from Larry’s request that you put identifying information in the upper right-hand corner: I’m sorry that I have to be difficult, but there you are. This information should be single-spaced; everything else in the essay should be double-spaced.

In addition, please include page numbers on any essay longer than one page.

How to cite a dictionary definition à la MLA

Hat tip to Mariana for the question!

Again the caveat: do not spend time formatting your essay according to MLA arcana when you could spend that time working over your analysis and argument. Analysis and argument are 90% of your essay grade; MLA formatting is 0%.

Parenthetical citation:

Jane’s image of Georgiana as “the cynosure of a ball-room” has a mocking undertone (Brontë 280). Brontë compares Georgiana’s intent to marry into money to the meaning of “cynosure” introduced into English in 1596 by Sir Francis Drake: the Pole-star and, figuratively, “Something that serves for guidance or direction” (“Cynosure,” defs. 1 and 2a).

Entry under Works Cited:

“Cynosure.” Defs. 1 and 2a. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 6 July 2008 <http://dictionary.oed.com&gt;.

(That, by the way, is the simplified format; perfectionists may turn to this PDF from SUNY to learn more rigorous formatting rules.)

Three quick usage rules:

1. Incorporate a definition into your essay only when that definition is unusual and interesting—as a general rule, give definitions only for meanings that are uncommon (example: the theological sense of disgrace) or that have gone out of use since Shakespeare’s time.
2. Use the definition to further your argument. If you take the space to spell out an unusual meaning of disgrace but don’t explain how that unusual definition betters our understanding of the sonnet, that space will be wasted.
3. Don’t begin an essay with a definition. Although this might give you a way to break the blank page, your reader is more interested in the argument of your essay than in the OED definition of “love.”

How to quote and cite Shakespeare’s sonnets

These are not details that are important to your essay grade, with the possible exception of #7—please, please do not spend time fixing the way you quote Shakes when you could spend that time enriching the textual analysis in your essay.

So, 7 quick rules:

1. Use numerals to indicate sonnet numbers

I can’t read a sentence beginning “In Shakespeare’s sonnets numbered one hundred and thirty-five and one hundred and thirty-six…” without thinking that you’ve just wasted a line of text you could have used to identify the themes or images central to those sonnets.

Hence:

In Sonnets 1 through 18, the speaker uses rhetorical and dramatic techniques to try to persuade the fair youth to procreate.

2. Only capitalize sonnet when referring to a specific one

Such as: 

Scholars have suggested that Sonnets 71 and 72 best encapsulate the death and poetry theme that runs throughout Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence.

3. Replace line breaks with slashes (/)

Example:

In apparent opposition to the poetry-as-immortality theme, the speaker equates his name with his body: “My name be buried where my body is, / And live no more to shame nor me nor you” (72.11-12).

4. Preserve punctuation and capitalization

Exception 1: remove the punctuation mark from the end of your quotation so that you can fit it more neatly into your own sentence.

Exception 2: diacritical marks indicating enunciation (e.g. “believèd,” 141.12).

Exemplum:

The speaker suggests that earlier love poetry tended to praise people in parts: “in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, / Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow”; the speaker distinguishes this praise from the more holistic beauty of his lover (106.5-7).

(By the way, the punctuation we see in our edition is not Shakespeare’s. Like spelling, punctuation in the 16th and 17th centuries was erratic. Compare Sonnet 129 as it appeared in 1609—page 133—with the version that appears in our book and note how modern editors have made free with commas, colons, and semicolons.)

5. Cite line numbers after quotations

See points 3, 4, and 6 for examples.

Observe:

• The citation is part of the sentence to which it refers, and is hence not separated from that sentence by a period: “…of his lover (106.5-7).”
• As the citation is the last item in the sentence, it is followed by a period. The period is exterior to the end parenthesis.
• Exception: if you quote 4 or more lines, format your citation as described in point 6 below. (The citation is not part of the sentence in that case.)
• When the sonnet number is not indicated by context, which is the case in points 3 and 4, that number goes before the line number thus: (106.5-7). 
• If the sonnet number had been indicated by context it would not have to be given, e.g. “Sonnet 106 ends with the phrase ‘tongues to praise’ (14).”
• You don’t have to write “line” or anything—when I see a number in parentheses after a verse quotation I assume that number refers to a line.

6. Quoting 4 lines or more? Don’t.

In a short essay you need all the space you can get.

Still, here’s the rule: quotations 4 lines or longer should be left-indented an inch; the right margin does not change, nor does the spacing. (That’s right: double-space block quotations.) E.g.:

Shakespeare exhibits his death fetish at the beginning of sonnet 71:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell. (1-4.)

7. Quote Shakespeare correctly

Because this essay asks you to look closely at the language of the sonnets, correct spelling and punctuation count enormously.

The characters in Shakespeare’s sonnets

• Call the narrator of the poem “the speaker” or “the lover.” The speaker is always male.
• Call the love object “the fair youth” (#1 through #126), “the dark lady” (#127 and after), or “the beloved” (all sonnets).
• In a few poems another poet appears. Call him “the rival poet.”

Formatting the top of your essay

This has no effect on your grade, but should give you a sense of the formatting that I, at least, am looking for. I can’t speak for other instructors and graders.

I prefer the top left corner of your essay to look like this:

Susie Q. Student
Mike Shapiro
ILS 121.311
1 July 2008

(It would be ILS 121.312 for students in the 10 o’ clock section.)

Then, centered, your title:

"Renaming and reframing": The rhetoric of appropriation in Bush's economic policy

(By the way, that title format—“Quotation”: Description of argument—is a fairly common one in collegiate essays.)

Finally, in the top right corner of every page should be your last name and the page number:

Doe 1

You can do this simply by editing the header in Word; here’s how.