It’s Bosses’ Day, Y’all!

Last Friday was Boss’s Day … or is it Bosses’ Day? I had a good back-and-forth with a coworker about the proper spelling. If you search the web, you’ll find that almost everyone calls it Boss’s Day. But I think that’s rubbish. And since we’re on the subject, is it Mothers Day, Mother’s Day, or Mothers’ Day? Fathers’ Day or Father’s Day? It’s all so confusing. But it’s only confusing due to one small coincidence of English grammar. That is, of course, that we use “s” for both plurals and possessives. In the case of a holiday meant to honor a certain class of people, it’s hard to know how exactly to treat the title. Maybe we can think about it as the day of bosses, and hence Bosses Day? Or Mothers Day. No apostrophe. Easy. But wait, because there is a sense in which the day belongs to those being honored. It’s their day. And really, this is how we all understand it. Go ahead, search online for Mother’s Day, Grandparent’s Day, etc. and you’ll see little apostrophes everywhere, declaring that each day is owned by its respective group. We want to give them something—the day—and so we do. Well, does Father’s Day belong to any one father in particular or to all fathers together? The latter, surely. Then why am I seeing Father’s Day instead of Fathers’ Day? It doesn’t make as much sense. Why is Boss’s Day the common expression and Bosses’ Day the rarity? It all comes back to the “s” confusion. In our grammatical system, Grandparent’s Day and Grandparents’ Day sound exactly alike. In spoken conversation, you wouldn’t think about the distinction; you would just say it, and everyone would know what you meant. How can this conundrum ever be resolved?

It dawned on me that there was only one way to bring clarity, one way to see what it is we are truly trying to say. We’d have to look at a day for which the plural form of the honored class was irregular, in which the plural did not involve the “s” that does double duty for the possessive form. Luckily, there is such a day. International Men’s Day is celebrated annually on November 19. International Women’s Day on March 8. In either case, there is no confusion. Look high and low, and there is total consensus. No one is tempted to say Men Day. Nor will you find the moniker Man’s Day. It’s Men’s Day everywhere. The day is modified by a form both plural (for all men, not just that one wonderful man in your life) and possessive, a day belonging to them. This makes sense, and besides, any other variation just sounds weird. Now we have our answer. Applying this rule consistently, we should be writing Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, Grandparents’ Day, and yes, Bosses’ Day. And I shall write them that way from now on. Why would we use a different logic for “Mother’s Day” than for Women’s Day (which, using our “Mother’s Day” logic, would be “Woman’s Day”)? I’ll tell you why. Because Mother’s Day and Mothers’ Day sound the same, and therefore it makes no difference when we speak it. In writing, the little apostrophe hanging precariously outside the word can look a little funny, if not unnerving. So, greeting card companies and people in general choose what looks nice, and I think that aesthetically Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have a lot going for them. This also explains the easiness we feel about “Men’s Day,” since the plural possessive still keeps the apostrophe safely corralled inside the closing “s”. There is no logical reason to use singular for the one holiday and plural for the other. This mismatch is the consequence of a mere accident of grammar, a lack of attention to detail, and the fact that it’s the way everyone else does it. Still, homophones and homophonic phrases often cause some confusion. For instance, I have seen people on the internet write “could of,” but in reality nobody says “could of.” What we say is “could’ve,” a contraction of “could have.” But since they sound the same, it’s all too easy to write “could of” (which doesn’t mean anything) without thinking about the actual words. So let’s think about the words, say what we mean, and have no more of this “Boss’s Day” gibberish. It’s Bosses’ Day!