Remember that the rule that the apostrophe gums up here is that if you have one brother, you use commas; if you have more than one brother, and you are referring to only one, you do not use commas.

For instance, my brother Michael is married. His wife's brother, Jose, is single.

The family Jones has a house. It is the Jones's (Joneziz) house. You are going there to visit the Joneses (Joneziz). Each member of the family has their own individual name, and you ask your friend, who knows the family, what the Joneses' (Joneziz) names (namez) are.

Aw, he's just letting off steam, as must all bags of hot air from time to time. ;D Self included (i.e. my latest protestant thesis against the industry-catholic style manuals).

I actually speak American English with an accent so "pure" that a professional linguist with the American military who I dated for a while said it was one of the things that attracted him. If Ken, who presumably would prefer to speak Norman French if he could get away with it, heard American English described as a "pure" anything, he'd probably spontaneously combust.

"...and that seems to follow..."

(gropes for early morning coffee)

Since I very fortunately do not work for the University of Chicago, a Chicago newspaper, or a Chicago-based corporation (anymore), I am free to use the construction that most of the country seems to prefer and which, likewise, seems to follow the most logical and understandable rule of clarity.

I mean, that really made me blink twice, hard, and gave me a feeling like you get when you eat too many raw onions and vinegar. Eeeeesh.

Mark, the situation is sufficiently weird that I don't think a rule exists. Moreover, I don't think such a rule SHOULD exist. (Just my opinion on the "should.")

I gather you mean to indicate that something can belong to one or more teams. I doubt there is a case that can't be improved by the use of a workaround.

Instead of, "We specialize in pizza parties for your team(s)' after-game celebrations" (for example), you could easily recast the awkward sentence into something like "Bring your teams here for the victory celebration," or "We specialize in pizza parties to celebrate team victories."

Bad examples, but I'm hard put to think of a sentence in which you might feel boxed into using a very strange possessive of a very odd construction like "team(s)."

Oh, fer cryin' out loud...

Native English speakers are not born with the ever-glorious Chicago or New York style books in their tiny grip.

Those books are good for one thing and one thing only, and that is to chronicle what a given group of "experts" in two cities considered correct grammar and usage policy for the two newspapers of those cities at the time the books were written.

Such books are obsolete the moment they are published; however, they serve as useful guides to those who want some sort of objective reference.

My impression of why this site is in existence, however, is for non-fluent speakers to imitate and learn the style of fluent, indeed extremely fluent, speakers. I did not think the intent was to prescribe a certain baseline way of speaking (such a thing does not exist) or to endorse one industry-accepted book or other.

OK. Rant over :) Dyske, you may chastise me for my presumption if you wish...

Nathan asks whether the NAACP (the "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People") should change its name to the NAAPC (presumably he means this to read "National Association for the Advancement of Political Correctness").

Genius, man.

Oh, well. I think that most kids grasp in a general sense that a verb is an "action word," an adjective is a "describing word," and a noun is a "person, place, or thing."

So a gerund could be explained in very basic terms as a verb ending in "ing" that takes the place of a noun (but you need to check to make sure it is not taking the place of an adjective becuase that is something else). Any other cases (I can't think of any offhand) where the verb form doen't end in "ing" can be treated as exceptions that don't violate the underlying rule.