Recently, as an aside to another post, I showed a moment's weakness. Yes, that's right - not a moments' weakness or a moments weakness, but a moment's weakness. In this post I asked you to tell me which of the following three was correct:
- Three minutes time
- Three minute's time
- Three minutes' time (my choice).
Folks commented, emailed, rang and texted* me to give me their opinions - which generally ran along the lines of me being wrong. This is why democracy doesn't work and hippy communes never make good profit returns on their marijuana plantations. Instead of everyone giving opinions, I should just tell you all what's right - that is the purpose of this communication medium, isn't it? That was rhetorical, it is.
The grammar is clear, if "time" belongs to "three minutes" then the apostrophe must surely follow the "s" of "minutes". The argument was that there was no genitive relationship; that two nouns had simply been dumped at the end of the sentence and left to their own devices to make sense. I never agreed with this, but I now have a counter example, the idiom:
"A Moment's Notice".
Now, listen here, nowhere** respectable I can find online or in print would ever write that idiom in any other way. Even the wonderful John Coltrane jazz composition is to be found with the apostrophe. The weak noun "notice" is very clearly possessed by the temporal concept of "moment" - just as "time" is possessed by "minutes" in my original example.
So, let's have no more debate on the matter. I, for my part, will endeavour never again to question my own brilliance, and I'd ask you to do the same by not planting little seeds of doubt in my head.
--
Yes, most of the grammar above is a bit tongue in cheek (Edit: Who am I kidding? It's hilarious. I bet none of you get it). But, here's a clarification on a word you'd otherwise hate me for, and one pun I couldn't resist drawing your attention to:
* I don't like it either, but that horrible verb and conjugation are here to stay.
** See what I did there? No? This is why I get to do the writing.
Hello, world!
Leave a comment, or read the 4 comments so far.
What, the part where you said "listen" even though you're writing?
No, but nice thought. Keep looking :)
As an aside though, the writing voice I'm using actually dictates that 'listen' should be used in preference to 'read', despite that seeming a little strange.
**I see what you did there, all very good to read :p
Nothing strange about listening to a blog post - maybe I use a screen reader.
My question: how could anyone not think it was "three minutes' time"? I can almost understand minute's, but to leave it out altogether? Crazy.
Post a Comment