After I mentioned a hymn in my previous post, I remembered another hymn I sang last year where a correctly used apostrophe causes another issue. I have sung the hymn many times before, but not noticed that issue.

Most hymnbooks have the music and words separate, with the music at the top and/or on the left hand page and the words in verses at the bottom and/or right hand page. Some hymnbooks always and others sometimes, especially for hymns with an irregular number or stress of words, have the words between the two staves, with each syllable placed under a note, separated by a hyphen whenever necessary. This hymnbook has the first formatting by default, but this hymn has an irregular number or stress of words, so this hymn has the second formatting.

The hymn Holy Spirit, ever dwelling in the holiest realms of light has the words Holy Spirit, ever living as the Church’s very life and Holy Spirit, ever working through the Church’s ministry in the second and third verses. The ’s turns the one-syllable Church into the two-syllable Church’s (compare justice’s sake in my previous post). In the first formatting, there’s no problem. In the second formatting, the editors must decide to use either Church -’s or Chur – ch’s, both of which look strange and are problematic in different ways. The editors’ solution is to sidestep the choice by setting Church’s without a hyphen, spanning both notes. I can’t immediately decide which I would choose.

The same issue occurs in the hymn The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. The English hymnbook we use has the first formatting, but the US hymnbook I have a copy of at home has the second formatting, and uses Church’s unhyphenated spanning both notes. Both of these are major hymnbooks within the Anglican/Episcopalian Church. There are also free versions of both hymns on the internet, which use Church’s, Church – ’s and Chur – ch’s. Most people wouldn’t notice.