How To Make Your Last Name Plural When Signing Holiday Cards

Think there's ever a reason to use an apostrophe when signing your family's last name on a card? Think again.

Being someone who's last name ends in an 's' has made me quite aware of the horrible pluralizations I've seen on holiday cards throughout the years. Your family is not The Simmons' or The Simmons's or certainly not The Simmonsses's.

Slate Magazine published a handy chart to help people figure out how to sign their family's last name on holiday cards. I urge everyone to read the guidelines below before locking in your signature on this year's Shutterfly card. Once that grammatical error is printed, there's no getting it back from the mailboxes of your judgmental families and friends.

First of all, there is NEVER a reason to use an apostrophe unless you are making your name possessive. If you want to send out a card from your family's dog, it's perfectly fine to say "Love, the Smiths' dog." Otherwise, forget the apostrophe. You're "The Smiths" and that's it.

Some people believe that if your name already ends in an 's' just adding an apostrophe at the end makes it plural. No one is quite sure how this started, but it is wrong. Technically you need to add an -es to your name to make it plural. "The Simmonses" or "The Borises" are both correct. If you're like me, however, you probably think that -es ending just looks really weird. If it bothers you (like me) it's always safe to just sign your card "The Boris Family".

Other names that necessitate an -es ending are ones that end in -x, -z, -ch or -sh. So if your name is Perez you're "The Perezes", if it's French you're "The Frenches". Signing your name '"The Frenchs" or "The French's" will only make Santa cry.

So now that you know how to correctly sign your name, grab that red pen and have fun correcting your family and friends once those cards start rolling in from "The Smith's."