August 15, 2013

Apostrophe exotica

Note: For punctuation wonks only. If that's not you, skip this one.

I just came across a sentence that does something I've never seen before. Note where the apostrophe appears in the bolded section:
Forget "Mad Men" modernism. This season's style is all about "Downton Abbey'' 's Edwardian opulence.
(I put a space between the final quotation mark around Downton Abbbey, and the apostrophe that follows it. Otherwise, given the limits of web typography, you couldn't tell which is the quote mark and which the apostrophe.)

Kinda weird but it seems correct to me. There is no apostrophe-s in the official title "Downton Abbey", so you can't put the apostrophe within the quotation marks. Therefore it must go after. But I've never seen this before. Kinda fun.

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