Wednesday, January 15, 2020

When Inc., or Ltd., or LLC is Possessive

What is the proper way to write a full company name as a possessive?

From Margie Holds Court (https://www.margieholdscourt.com/when-inc-is-possessive/):

When the word “Inc.” is possessive, it does not take the second comma after it.
…It was Joe Doe Company, Inc.’s employee.
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Concurring opinions can be found at the following:
Nowadays most writing manuals are suggesting that we get rid of the commas that set off "Inc." from the rest of the sentence. If the company so named, however, clearly prefers a comma between its name and the word "Inc.," you should use that comma, and you should set off "Inc." as a parenthetical element (commas before and after it) when it appears in the middle of running text (as in your sentence, above). To form the possessive of a company's name when Inc. is involved, simply add apostrophe + s to the Inc., but eliminate the second comma (if one is used): ABC Distributing Inc.'s new policy or ABC Distributing, Inc.'s new policy.Authority: The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill: New York. 2001. Used with the consent of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. p. 156.
Authority: New York Public Library Writer's Guide to Style and Usage HarperCollins: New York. 1994. Cited with permission. p. 272.

Normally, if you use a comma to set off the Inc. from the rest of the company name, you'd put a comma before it and a comma after it. The second comma is dropped, however, just as you have done it above, when you turn the Inc. into a possessive. Most writing manuals nowadays are recommending that the commas that set off the Inc. simply be dropped. In that case, you would write the possessive in the same way—just without the comma.Authority: The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill: New York. 2001. Used with the consent of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. p. 34.


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