Do we apostrophe 's' or don't we?

That diminutive symbol which marks a noun to signal possession or ownership was the subject of an amusing discussion in my workplace not long ago. Yes, I mean the apostrophe. We place the apostrophe right after the proper or common noun to indicate that someone or something belongs to the person or thing in question. Here are some examples: the woman's dog; the boy's bike; the city's residents; the cat's tail; the car's doors; Dora's car; Nora's husband; James' skis; Jesus' teachings; the women's dogs; the children's school; the boys' teacher; the girls' bags.

The example, the car's keys may run into trouble with strict grammar rules which restrict ownership to only living things. In this case, a car cannot own keys. To circumvent this problem, some writers would phrase it as the car doors, where the words car and doors are taken together as a noun. Likewise, it may be awkward to say the table's legs. Instead, we would say the table legs are broken, for example. So far, so good, but what about lamp's bulb. I have no trouble with that although strict grammarians may insist on saying the bulb of the lamp.

The use of the apostrophe with proper nouns such as Nora's husband presents no difficulty. However, traditionalists may argue that James' skis would be out of sync with the traditional rule that requires the letter 's' after the apostrophe for names that end with 's' as in James's skis. The same rule says that it's not necessary to have the letter 's' for Biblical or classical names as in Jesus' teachings and Hippocrates' Oath. The trend now ignores this traditional rule and it's common to see writers writing Jess' speech alongside Jesus' teachings. I think Jesus wouldn't object to that.