Is it Harris’ or Harris’s? There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds

If she wins, Kamala Harris would become the fourth U.S. President with a last name ending in S and the first since Rutherford B. Hayes, who was elected in 1876 — 130 years before the founding of Twitter — and was spared the social media frenzy over apostrophes

Whatever possessed Vice-President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to get grammar nerds fired up.

“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” said Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California who jumped into the fray on social media less than an hour after Ms. Harris selected Mr. Walz last week to offer his take on possessive proper nouns.

The Associated Press Stylebook says “use only an apostrophe” for singular proper names ending in S: Dickens’ novels, Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life. But not everyone agrees.

Debate about possessive proper names ending in S started soon after President Joe Biden cleared the way for Ms. Harris to run. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s? But the selection of Mr. Walz with his sounds-like-an-s surname really ramped it up, said Benjamin Dreyer, the retired copy chief at Random House and author of Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.

Mr. Dreyer was inundated with questions within minutes of the announcement, which came while he was at the dentist.

“I was like, ‘All right, everybody just has to chill. I’ll be home in a little while and I can get to my desk,’” he said.

While there is widespread agreement that Walz’s is correct, confusion persists about Harris’ vs. Harris’s. Dreyer’s verdict? Add the ’s.