Apostrophe me

So far in this class, I have learned a lot in terms of grammar and punctuation. Although we have not had many classes, I feel that I have acquired a few skills already. The main thing that I have learned is related to the "house style" section in our living grammar scrapbook. I had no clue that each publication had so much wiggle room when it comes to grammar. THINGS LIKE NUMBERS, APOSTROPHES, NAMES. I was unaware that various magazines and newspapers could create their own rules. Sometimes, it's hard to even find what the rule is. For example, in Cosmopolitan magazine, they write out numbers and spell out numbers seemingly equally. It was virtually impossible for me to find out what that rule was.

I have also learned a lot dealing with apostrophes. We spent a whole class looking at these little marks and I was interested to find that I used some apostrophes wrong. I have always had trouble using an apostrophe when the word ended in an 's'. Names were especially hard for me. 

Sentences such as:

Chris's ball bounced across the road.

Or is it:

Chris' ball bounced across the road.

The new style of apostrophe rules says that it would be the second version. But is that always the case? Is there no 's' after the apostrophe for anyone's name that ends with an 's'. That is still confusing to me. Other dealings with apostrophes are easier for me to emulate. I feel pretty confident in using the apostrophe with contractions like it's, who's, they're and you're. That has always come naturally to me. I haven't even thought of using apostrophes for letters, numbers, and abbreviations. I had always just stuck one in where it looked good, but now I know that there are real rules regarding this topic. 

Overall, I have learned that grammar and punctuation are far more important than I thought they were. I have never really paid any attention to my grammar and punctuation and I have never really been criticized for the ways in which I used them. Now I see that grammar and punctuation can change the way a word sounds or even how a sentence reads. It is a vital tool that I used to take for granted. In the exercise where we looked at the Dear John letter, I was shocked to see that changing the punctuation of the sentence can change the whole meaning from a love letter to a break-up letter. From now on, I will pay attention to the ways I use my grammar and the way I convey my thoughts to my audiences.

My final question for this blog was said earlier. But I will include it at the end as well. I want to know if there is always an apostrophe without an 's' after names that end with an 's' such as James.