The revolution has begun. No longer will we put up with dodgy speeling, misplaced apostrophes' or improper; punctuation? P.S. pointing out bad grammar in postings is banned. To justify this I'm applying a form of grammatical 'absolute privilege', as the public interest in publishing mistakes far outweighs the cost to the public of making further mistakes. Call me a hypocrite if you will, but it works in Westminster.
My housemate says this doesn't need anything else because it's a name. Just to confirm, that is 100% WRONG isn't it? Does it belong to Spiller, or Spillers or is it a statement that he/she records things?
posted by Robbie L @ 12:44 AM
6 Comments:
That has annoyed me since my first year
Wilko
Well Robbie, this is how I see it... Thom and I debated this last year. If you're talking about the Medics football team, we decided you can say 'The Medics coach said' with no apostrophe. Because you wouldn't need one if you said 'The Arsenal coach said'. So say it was HMV and the slogan was 'HMV Records', then you wouldn't need an apostrophe. So perhaps they can get away with it. It's debatable though.
But surely "Arsenal's coach" would have an apostrophe, and isn't that closer to "Spillers Records", which I assume is named after a Spiller, rather than a Spillers? HMV doesn't really count because it's an acronym, and so adds big sticky layers of confusion. But I see your point; "Virgin Records" doesn't grate in the same way. The plot thickens. I still maintain that "Spillers Records" just doesn't look right. I suspect you and Thom are pushing for a liberal attitude towards this kind of thing. Over my dead bodie (arf arf).
Not at all. Bad grammar annoys me more than most things in life. I agree that Spillers Records seems to need an apostrophe on the surface, but a closer look does raise questions. A strange one.
Surely it depends. If the records are owned by someone called Spiller, then it'd be Spiller's Records. If the records are owned by two people with the surname Spiller, then obviously it'd be Spillers' Records.
But if the word 'Spiller' isn't related to the owner, then surely it doesn't need one.
Thankyou Jim, your argument is convincing. Nonetheless, something still doesn't sit right with me that it can be a record shop belonging to Mr Spiller, yet it doesn't need an apostrophe.
Doesn't that create a get out clause for a whole host of appalling mistakes? "It's a retail brand name, guv, you can't touch me, I know my rights".
That's almost as bad as "I was just holding the apostrophe in that position for a friend, of course I know it doesn't belong there".
You can see my concern.
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