Thursday May 1, 2008
The three-hour apostrophe
The latest series of The Apprentice is full of hide-behind-the-sofa moments, but I don’t think I’ve ever cringed so much as last night, when team leader Michael Sophocles spent fully three hours trying to work out where to put an apostrophe on the message of a greetings card.
In a way, he was right – it was important. But have standards fallen so low that it takes that long to sort out a single grammatical point?
As it happened, Mr Sophocles had the gods on his side. He was trying to work out where or whether to put the apostrophe in “National Singles Day”. Little did he know that, just as in a penalty shootout, he had a roughly two in three chance of getting it right.
The three options are as follows:
National Singles’ Day. This is the safest option, and the one that Mr Sophocles chose. It is a day that belongs to singles; singles is plural; therefore the apostrophe goes after the s.
National Singles Day. This, to my mind, is also acceptable – even if it’s the grammatical equivalent of firing the penalty down the middle of the goal and hoping the keeper dives out of the way. “Singles”, here, is used adjectivally, describing the day.
National Single’s Day. This is utterly, horribly and embarrassingly wrong. It means that the day belongs to only one single, which is not very clever when you’re trying to sell thousands of cards. Had I bought a card with this on it, I would have taken it back to the shop.
Needless to say, the utterly, horribly and embarrassingly wrong answer was the only one advocated by a panel member on The Apprentice, You’re Fired – with the MD of a national chain of card shops nodding vigorously in the audience. Scary stuff.
But it didn’t matter anyway. Flush with the success of his victory in the boardroom, Mr Sophocles celebrated as if he’d just won a penalty shootout at Wembley – to the silent horror of everyone else.
“I don’t condone that,” mumbled Sir Alan, marking Mr Sophocles’ card.
In other words: you don’t know it yet, my friend, but you’re fired.
And you know where to put the apostrophe in that.
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