Is it this:

The Vipers were known to frequent the Steelworks District these days, and taking out one of the Red Pills’ five members seemed like a logical thing for the little bastards to do.

Or this:

The Vipers were known to frequent the Steelworks District these days, and taking out one of the Red Pill's five members seemed like a logical thing for the little bastards to do.

Or this:

The Vipers were known to frequent the Steelworks District these days, and taking out one of the Red Pills five members seemed like a logical thing for the little bastards to do.

(the actual name of the gang / title of the story is The Red Pills Motorcycle Club)

I think since the name is P-I-L-L-S then the apostrophe goes after the S. But It's been a long long time since I've had an english class lol.

"Pills'"

The fourth option is best: reword.

word

Pills's

Dude. I'm drunk and my natvie language is finnish, and even ik now that its the first option.

I think this thread should now be dedicated to people named "Grammer."

As far as the word Pills goes, option number 1 is correct.

If my name is "Stokes" then my theorem is "Stokes' Theorem".

But other than that, your sentence sucks total balls. Restructure it.

double s is acceptable if the noun is singular and ends with an s as long as you're consistent

like Charles's

here Red Pills is singular

so either Charles' or Charles's is acceptable
similarly Red Pills' or Red Pills's is acceptable

I think Red Pills's looks really weird, I'd always go for Pills' instead.
Either that, or reword as said before

Thanks for all the help.



Yeah, that might be a good idea.

Does the below read slightly better?

The Vipers started frequenting the Steelworks District these days, and taking out one of the Red Pills’ five members seemed like a logical thing for the little bastards to do.

How about:

"The Vipers recently began to frequent the Steelworks District" for the first part. Unsure of what your second part means by 'taking out' ... like removing? or like going out somewhere?

How about some god damned clause tense agreement.

"The Vipers started frequenting" / "The Vipers were known to frequent" - Past tense.

"these days" - Present tense.

Try "The Vipers frequented the steelworks in those days" or "The Vipers are frequenting the steelworks these days".

Great point, JM, thanks! I always have my tenses all over the place...

How's this?

The Vipers recently took to frequenting the Steelworks District, and taking out one of the Red Pills’ five members seemed like a logical thing for the little bastards to do.

WTF is this for anyway?!

Is this being narrated by a member of the rival gang? Doesn't sound like it.

Agghr, I've accidentally edited this out. It was from the following 250 word excerpt of a 6000 word story (and Vipers are mutant midget bikers):

---

Zak’s motorbike changed its humming to a lower level of bass. The bar’s front door lay torn in two, shards of glass lining the cracked pavement under the busted window frames.

Eli’s motorcycle was still outside, right next to Volanda’s purple chrome Samurai. Zak parked his power cruiser by her bike and headed for the doorless entrance

He stepped around the overturned tables, trying to avoid the pieces of broken bottles that littered the floor. Volanda sat on the bar stand, a cigarette dangling between her lips. No matter how hard he tried, Zak could never forget her beautiful lips with the after-taste of cinnamon candy. Her hair and lipstick matched the purple of her motorcycle.

“Glad you made it,” she said.

“Was it the Vipers?”

The Vipers recently took to frequenting the Steelworks District, and taking out one of the Red Pills’ five members seemed like a logical thing for the little bastards to do.

“No. I spoke to a couple of locals. The Eyes got him.”

Zak looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening in. It never hurt to be paranoid when Exotec Interal Security - the Trader’s Guild’s teeth and claws - were involved.

---

Well, I guess that killed it.

Why did you hyphenate "no one?" And you used dashes as emdashes. It pays to memorize the alt code for them: alt+0151. I'd still rewrite the sentence in question. "Little bastards" is something for dialogue; it's out of place in the narration. Other than that, the part about taking out the shovels is pretty corny. The rest looks technically good. Not enough context to decide whether it's interesting.

I think you want "had recently taken," not "recently took."

And to follow up on Free's comment, the diction of the narration is inconsistent. Sometimes the narrator seems to be a projection of Zak (e.g. referring to the Red Pills as "little bastards")--which is fine if it's consistent--but other times the narration has its own voice (e.g. "changed its humming to a lower level of bass," which doesn't sound much like anything I'd expect this character to say). The incongruity is really striking in the second sentence, where "shards of glass lining the cracked pavement" comes from a relatively high register and contrasts immediately with the much more colloquial "busted."

I think we just ran out of people named Grammer.

Who cares? Most people don't even know the difference.

If your standard in writing is "most people won't know the difference," then your end result is going to be mediocre. Quality craftsmanship is about doing everything as well as you can, despite the fact that not everyone will appreciate every detail.

I don't think I've ever seen emdashes used, except in examples of how emdashes are used.
It's always standard dashes

Then you don't read much.

I read a few hours a day, and I'm with Deadman.

You people need more culture.

I don't understand what culture has to do with punctuation.

Culture is also impossible to quantify. You cannot have more or less culture than someone else. You simply have different culture.

True, I only go through about two novels a week

Freelancer is just pissy because we disagree with him, so now he's going to make obtuse statements and sound like a haughty dick wad.

Every book I've ever read uses them about five times per paragraph.

What in the hell kind of books do you read that have so many god damned dashes?

"Cultural" ones, apparently.

Those sound like some godsawful books.

This bickering is stupid as hell.

I sorta doubt you guys haven't seen emdashes used with some frequency, you probably just don't remember. They're fairly commonplace.

Tomorrow after your daily hours of reading let us know if you still haven't seen any, and if you haven't, I'll accept that your reading material is devoid of 'em

I've typed out a long response, but then accidentally navigated from the page without submitting. Thank you Freelancer and Vornskr for your comments.

I was planning on letting the line about the shovels go anyway, and will definitely change the hyphens into em-dashes. I couldn't agree more with Vornskr about adhering to a high standard of quality if at all possible.

I'll also consider the note about the voice (narrator's voice versus Zak's voice), but probably won't make any significant changes in that regard until I've run the full piece through AbsoluteWrite and Critters.org.