Style Q&A
Thanks to Maud Newton (in "Miscellany") I learned that the Chigago Manual of Style has posted new Q&A. I whet your appetite with but one example:
Q. The information posted on the Possessives and Attributives Web page comes close to answering my question, but I would appreciate a more detailed explanation: Did we have dinner at the Smiths or at the Smiths'? I am tempted to omit the apostrophe if I consider the preposition "at" equivalent to German bei + dative plural, French chez, Italian da, etc. But if "at the Smiths'" is shorthand for "at the Smiths' house," perhaps I need an apostrophe. Is "Smiths" functioning as a genitive or an attributive adjective? What if, instead of "Smiths," I refer to a group of people (residents, occupants) by some other word, e.g., We had dinner at the neighbors, Canadians, etc?
A. Throwing a dinner "at the Smiths" works if you're describing a food fight, but if you are at the Smiths', you are at the Smiths' place, and, as you suggest, the implied possession requires an apostrophe.
Duh! Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees — I thought that one was pretty obvious. Clearly the questioner is just trying to manufacture a reason to be contrary, a course of action I usually describe as "being republican".
Anyway, I haven't decided yet which is worse: 1) that people would worry enough about these stupid, niggling aspects of our not-very-manageable language; or 2) that this Q&A did answer a couple of questions I'd been wondering about….