"question and answer" or "question-and-answer"

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J Lewis

#266995 Thu, 14 Sep 06 04:33 PM

Yes, Cool Breeze, I agree. Your two possibilites are right and I wouldn't use the plural without an apostrophe. I note that in AmE you say "afterward". I didn't know that; in BrE we say "afterwards". And also "towards".

J Lewis

Joined on Tue, Sep 5 2006

Italy

Regular Member (518)

Plurals, Apostrophes

Marius Hancu

#267040 Thu, 14 Sep 06 05:15 PM

J Lewis wrote:
Yes, Cool Breeze, I agree. Your two possibilites are right and I wouldn't use the plural without an apostrophe.

Yes:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=%22ten+minutes%27%22&srchst=nyt

Marius Hancu

Joined on Wed, Apr 26 2006

Montreal, Canada

Veteran Member (11,673)

Plurals, Apostrophes

Cool Breeze

#267064 Thu, 14 Sep 06 05:48 PM

J Lewis wrote:
Yes, Cool Breeze, I agree. Your two possibilites are right and I wouldn't use the plural without an apostrophe. I note that in AmE you say "afterward". I didn't know that; in BrE we say "afterwards". And also "towards".

Thank you, J Lewis. I am familiar with both toward and towards but didn't know that one was American and the other British. One learns something every day.

The use of the apostrophe is a very difficult thing. I watched a football (AE: soccer) match on TV a couple of days ago. It was a Champions League match, not Champions' League. Hm... I know it is advisable to leave out the apostrophe in some cases and this seems to be one. But a plural noun isn't very often used adjectivally that way.

Cheers
CB

Cool Breeze

Joined on Fri, Apr 7 2006

Helsinki, Finland

Senior Member (2,856)

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.- Mark Twain

Plurals, Nouns, Apostrophes, Football

Grammar Geek

#267108 Thu, 14 Sep 06 06:47 PM

Sorry, I was inattentive. Yes, a ten-minute question-and-answer session. I first wrote "ten minutes of questions and answers" and then changed my mind about what I was saying, and didn't got back to fix it. Thank you for correcting the error.

I always forget about the toward/towards and other similar issues. I would say "afterward."

Grammar Geek

Joined on Tue, Jan 10 2006

Pennsylvania, USA

Veteran Member (15,590)

Barbara, who answers in American English.

Yoong Liat

#267390 Fri, 15 Sep 06 12:06 PM

Barbara

A ten-minute question-and-answer session. One member says 'A ten minutes' question-and-answer session' is also correct. I believe it is, but your version sounds so much better. Do you agree with me?

Yoong Liat

Joined on Mon, Sep 4 2006

Singapore

Veteran Member (6,009)

Yoong Liat

Grammar Geek

#267470 Fri, 15 Sep 06 03:18 PM

I do not believe that A ten minutes' question-and-answer session will follow the presentation is correct. Or, it may be technically correct, but it is not natural and not what I would expect to see.

(Actually, what I would expect is "We'll have ten minutes for questions following the presentation," but I was trying to find something using a hyphenated construction.)

Grammar Geek

Constructions

J Lewis

#267479 Fri, 15 Sep 06 03:27 PM

To Cool Breeze about Champions League. Actually I would not have known whether to put an apostrophe or not in this case (I'm not a football enthusiast). In general you're right, that plural nouns are not often used adjectivally. the exception is when a noun is normally used in the plural. As we can talk about a single tooth we say toothbrush, not teethbrush, even though we (usually) have more than one tooth. On the other hand, "clothes" is always plural, so we say clothes-brush.
A digression about "soccer", which you say is AmE. Historically this is a BrE term and was coined to distinguish football according to AsSOCiation rules from Rugby football (sometimes called "rugger"). However, if you mention football in Britain, people will assume you arer talking about soccer, so the term has become more useful for the Americans, to distinguish from American football.
Cheers
Lewis

J Lewis

Plurals, Nouns, Apostrophes, Football, Rugby

Cool Breeze

#267791 Sat, 16 Sep 06 08:36 AM

J Lewis: Thank you for the explanation of 'soccer'. I knew it had been coined from 'association', but didn't know it had been done by the British.

Words like 'clothesline' are in dictionaries, so it's understandable that the plural s is there. A United Nations assembly is not in dictionaries and since nations does not denote time or distance, the apostrophe can be omitted, in my opinion anyway.

Grammar Geek: According to all the grammar books I have seen, the s-genitive can be used to denote time and distance and thus expressions like a two hours' walk are correct English. It may not sound natural to some but is certainly used by distinguished, native writers. A two hours' walk is from Otto Jespersen's Essentials of English Grammar. Perhaps the grammarians dislike the idea of English being too restricted in usage and have included examples of usage that may not be very common in everyday conversation. Smile [:)]

Cheers
CB

Cool Breeze

Grammar, Plurals, Conversations, Expressions, English grammar, Apostrophes, Genitives

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