Saturday, June 30, 2018

grammatical number - Apostrophe in “beginners guide”



In the phrase beginners guide to …, where should the apostrophe go?





  1. Beginners Guide to […]

  2. Beginners Guide to […]



In my particular case, this is the title for a presentation so there are multiple beginners that are being addressed.


Answer



If your intention is to address each member of the audience directly, I suggest you prefix the phrase with an appropriate article, as in:





A Beginner's Guide to Shoe Hurling




or




The Beginner's Guide to Shoe Hurling





The use of the apostrophe before s seems more apt in this context.



Although:




Beginners' Guide to Shoe Hurling




is also grammatically correct, but would make your presentation sound impersonal.


No comments:

Post a Comment