Saturday, October 17, 2009

Judge This!

(screen shot from NBC's Community)

I'm not normally a spelling fanatic, mainly because I'm such a horrible speller myself. However, I'm also not a set designer for a major network sitcom production. Unlike the person who designed the backdrop for the recent episode of NBC's Community which featured a gigantic sign reading "JUDGES BOOTH." I'm reasonably certain that the booth in question is possessed by the judges in question, rendering the preferred orthography as "JUDGES' BOOTH" (same in MLA and APA, see Purdue's excellent OWL site for MLA and for APA):

add ' to the end of plural nouns that end in -s:
--- houses' roofs

--- three friends' letters


See for yourself: Community, Season 1 : Ep. 5 "Advanced Criminal Law", 9:26 minute mark (on Hulu)

2 comments:

J. Frankenstein Lutes said...

I don't know if the mistake was intentional or not, but if it was it is certainly consonant with the show's generally derisive treatment of community college.

Chris said...

Interesting possibility. Very subtle too.

And sorry for the delay in responding.

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