Member Avatar for lisag6

Hi - We have this line ~Contact.FirstName~ in our subject line for an email. We need to add an 's at the end to make it plural. So it would read Joe's instead of just Joe.

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KoniKodes commented: ʼ = ʼ +1

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Generated

Short answer: in most template systems you can append the apostrophe and s directly to the placeholder — for example ~Contact.FirstName~'s — and that will render "Joe's". That is the quickest fix, but it can produce awkward results if the first-name field is empty or if you want special handling for names that already end in "s". As noted, adding "'s" makes the name possessive (not plural), so pick the style you want for names like "Chris".

A small, robust pattern to follow (pseudocode):

if FirstName is empty:
  use fallback like "Customer"
else if FirstName ends with "s" (case-insensitive):
  append "'"    # Chris -> Chris'
else:
  append "'s"   # Joe -> Joe's

Examples you can adapt to your engine:

JavaScript-style:

const first = (contact.firstName || '').trim();
const subjectName = first
  ? (first.slice(-1).toLowerCase() === 's' ? `${first}'` : `${first}'s`)
  : 'Customer';

Liquid-style (Mailchimp/Shopify-like):

{% assign first = contact.firstname | default: '' | strip %}
{% if first != '' %}
  {% assign last = first | slice: -1 %}
  {% if last == 's' or last == 'S' %}{{ first }}'{% else %}{{ first }}'s{% endif %}
{% else %}Valued Customer{% endif %}

Quick checklist and cautions:

  • Don’t hardcode 's if the name can be empty — use a fallback.
  • Decide which style you want for terminal "s" (Chicago: "Chris's"; AP often: "Chris'") and implement accordingly.
  • Subject lines are plain text; use a straight apostrophe (') rather than HTML entities.
  • Test with examples: "Joe", "Chris", "O'Connor", and blank names to confirm output.

As implied, the exact syntax depends on the templating language your mail system uses; the patterns above cover the common approaches so you can adapt them to your engine.

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

I've yet to see a HTML only emailer. Try adding a tag for the coding language in use and then the code you have so far.

Member Avatar for gce517

Making it Joe's instead of Joe would make it possessive (as belonging to Joe), not plural (as referring to many people named Joe).

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