There's a commercial on in New York right now advertising a casino in New Jersey. It's a scripted scenario about the Jones and Smith families, and its pronunciation of Jones bugs me.
They just say "the Jones."
My inclination is to say Joneses, as that's technically the plural — and that's how we say it when we talk about keeping up with them. Whether to cap the The, however, is something I'm not prepared to answer (but I lean toward keeping it down).
My mom called the other day asking how to punctuate an invitation for a party given by several families, and it forced me toward a most inconvenient use of this "rule" for pluralizing surnames.
The culprits? We'll call them the Wilson-Tate family.
There was just no good way to do this. I mean, "Hosted by The Smiths, The Connors and The Wilson-Tateses"? See, this is why I'm not a feminist. Just take his name, woman!
It's tricky, and it can happen to any family, hyphenated or no. For example, The Rogerses just looks weird. And what do seasoned j-nalists do when this happens? That's right, kids. Write around it!
"Hosted by The Smith, Connor and Wilson-Tate families."
And SCENE.
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