3 ms·

> it's not even accepted colloquially in spoken English How the hell would you hear the apostrophe in "spoken English"?

• Strang 2y ago
  That's exactly his point. You don't hear the apostrophe but you do hear the "s," meaning that Thomas and Thomas' cannot be distinguished. And so Thomas's must be used instead.
  • shadowgovt 2y ago
    The spoken and written language are not the same thing. Even if you say "Thomas's," sources disagree on whether you write "Thomas's" or "Thomas'", because the latter is more consistent with the rules for other ends-in-s words and, therefore, easier to remember. (My personal prediction: give it 100 to 200 years and we're going to drop the trailing 's' in all these cases. "Cat'" will just be pronounced "cats" and understood to mean "an adjective indicating the noun is owned by the cat").
  • secondcoming 2y ago
    Thomas’ is pronounced the same as Thomas’s.
  • Turing_Machine 2y ago
    As the OP said, "Thomas'" is pronounced "Thomases". "Thomas's" means "belongs to Thomas". Pronounced the same, but spelled differently, because it is a different word.