According to Little and Brown, if a name is a plural of a word (they use the example of Rivers), then it just gets the apostrophe, no additional s.

When I last asked the Buffistas, I was told that Jesus and Moses were special exceptions and that 's was mandatory everywhere else.

I often ignore that advice.

Just catching up on Susan's piece, the one thing that stuck in my mind, since I read it last night, is that you said the heroine was "racist".

Maybe it's just me, but that just sounds awful to me. You went on and softened it afterward, but hey, if she's racist, she's pretty much a bad person and I don't care if she gets hit by a truck, let alone finds True Love. I'd have been much happier reading something like "she's been brought up in a racist family" or "she has the racist attitudes typical of her upbringing" or something.

I'd have been much happier reading something like "she's been brought up in a racist family" or "she has the racist attitudes typical of her upbringing" or something.

Wouldn't she still be racist?

I'd have been much happier reading something like "she's been brought up in a racist family" or "she has the racist attitudes typical of her upbringing" or something.

That's what I was trying to get at by saying it's clear she's acting out of ignorance instead of malice, but I could certainly change it.

Wouldn't she still be racist?

Well yeah, but there's something about saying a person is something that makes it sound final, and much more damning, than if you say that they have certain attitudes, which to my mind links it in a certain time in their life.

Do her attitudes change, Susan, as the book goes on? I'm assuming this isn't one of those aryan-fascist-KKK-sponsored-white-supremacist romance novels that are so common in bookstores today...

Oh yes, her attitudes definitely change--not in one big epiphany, but you see her gradually become more open-minded throughout.

In that case I think I would have written "At the start of the book..." followed by whatever you have to say about her attitudes.

In writing class tonight, I got applause. And then one of my classmates said it was a very polished scene, so he wasn't surprised it was from earlier in the story than the previous things I'd had workshopped. I said, "I've been writing the book out of order. I actually wrote this scene last night." They then clapped again.

I'm floating about six feet above the ground right now.

Cool. Go, Susan.