Tuesday 29 July 2008

I'm Right & You're Wrong

In the following phrase;

"..may be followed by three minutes silence",

an apostrophe is missing. The fragment should read;

"..may be followed by three minutes' silence".

You may disagree. Most people I've shown this to disagree. I am right. If you disagree, you are wrong. If you agree, you are right. Comments are disabled for this post.

I've emailed the editors of the Oxford Guide to English, and the honorary secretary of that most venerable of institutions, the Queen's English Society. If those two, in a vastly improbable move, inform me that I, am in fact, wrong on this matter, then consider this post my retirement from the internet.

Finally, is anyone else annoyed by the fact that the specification for URLs (and, whilst we're at it, many common file system restrictions/issues) leads to poor grammar in digital files? Even the QES has to endure the horrors of the following URL:

http://www.queens-english-society.com/.

Apparently not even I'm safe either - just look at the URL of this very post! Such a terrifying time we live in.

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