Excuse me, but I seem to have lost an apostrophe

I've been looking over the page proofs for the 16th edition of [Someone's] Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learing, due out in January, and note that it is not
Bear's Guide (which it was for its first 20 years, or
Bears' Guide (which it was for its next 11 years), but
Bears Guide.

Is this grammatically OK? I don't think so . . . but no one asked me, and I no longer own the copyright anyway.

 

You'd better woo her back, Dr. Bear. You can’t defend “Bears Guide” as the plural of a compound noun (like sergeants major). More to the point, it is not in the small category of singular compound nouns that have plural first members (such as overseas investor).

As I’m sure you know, publishers can be quite shaky when it comes to editing – both surface and substantive. If the project is important, parachute in one of your own.

Happy proofing!

 

Maybe the publisher felt that now you no longer possess
the copyright, then there is no need of the 'possessive'!

 

Copyrights sold in 1998, so that's probably not the issue. I believe the publisher is declaring "Bears" to be just a brand-name-type word, the "s" incidental, as if it were Modern Guide or Purple Guide. I have no problem with this -- just curious -- and in a world where signs routinely say GIFT'S FOR SALE and BRUSSEL SPROUT'S, no one is likely to notice.

 

Much worse things to lose...

Much worse things to lose than an apostrophe, ask Bobbit....

 

I strongly agree with DougG, John. You may have sold the copyright, but that's still your name above the door.

Just a suggestion: In the future, sell your copyrights with some conditions... like with regard to how your name is used, for example.

Not if Lorena's the Bobbit you ask, I'll bet.

 

Gregg:
Suggestion: In the future, sell your copyrights with some conditions... like with regard to how your name is used, for example.

John:
Book and album titles are specifically excluded from trademark protection by the Lanham Act, as the band Medicine Head learned to its distress when Pink Floyd came out with an album called Dark Side of the Moon a year after theirs with identical title.

In a subtle distinction, titles of series can be trademarked, as in "The Bears Guide books" but not any individual title within that series.

Even if names could be protected (they can't; if the biggest Pontiac dealer in Canada, one John Bear, wanted to do a book on degrees, he surely could), my name does not appear in the forthcoming Bears Guide other than a little 'farewell' message inside. The principal author happens to be named Bear, but even that is irrelevant. Bears Guide to Earning High School Degrees... is by Tom Nixon.

 

John:

If they've given you page proofs, they must expect that there might be final changes. If you are not the one to do this formally, pass the suggestion along to whoever is.

If it is grammatically incorrect, and it is, ask them to change it. They surely want it to be correct in this regard, since it is a book devoted to education.

Regards as always,

marilynd

 

Amusingly, Ten Speed online
* lists it as Bears' Guide
* shows the cover reading Bears' Guide
* tells the authors it is going to Bears Guide.

At least it will satsify the Canadian Commission de Protection de la Langue Francaise which, according to Mordecai Richler's wonderful rant, ordered Bill's Drugs (and other French-language criminals) to remove the apolstrophes from their signs.

J'ohn Bears