Nej's Natterings

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Apostrophe Catastrophe

Much hilarity ensued on the Apprentice last night, when one team couldn't decide on an apostrophe placing on their greetings card: Was it Singles Day, Single's Day, or Singles' Day?

They spent 3 hours debating this, calling various literary authorities without success. This included the editor of the Telegraph and the British Library. Sir Al(sati)an Sugar lambasted them for this. Curiously, he didn't actually offer an opinion of his own as to which it should be.

The thing is, though, that they are all correct. It just depends on how you look at it. I'm no grammatical wizard, but as far as I can see you can argue the case for all three:

Singles Day - this implies that the day is for many single people. The day is not owned by them, hence there is no apostrophe needed.
Single's Day - this implies the day is owned by one particular single person - presumably the one that is receiving the card.
Singles' Day - this implies the day is owned by all the single people.

As we can see here, they are all legitimate interpretations of the phrase, making it tricky to decide which one to use. The same goes for Mothers/Mother's/Mothers' Day.

I suppose there is a slight difference here though, in which Mother is a noun, whilst Single may not be. A person is "a" mother, but are they "a" single? I'm sure you can argue that in this case the single could be a noun but I think that in the same way that a person is overweight, or obtuse, or intelligent, a person is single. It is a description, and hence an adjective. Somebody else will probably argue that Mother could be an adjective, too. I think that Mother is definitely a noun and possibly an adjective, whereas Single is possibly a noun and definitely an adjective.

I would have gone with Singles Day; I don't think that Single can properly be a noun, and I think the day is for them, not owned by them. Incidentally, Firefox's spell checker does not recognise Single's, only Singles and Singles'. Then again, it also insists I should spell recognise with a z.

In the end they stuck it on the end of the s, making in Singles' Day.

I'm sure somebody else would see this differently.