Find the Error 45
(Extract adapted from a promotional brochure produced
by a major British city's tourist board)
What kind of mistake do you see? (Choose one:)
- apostrophes
- articles
- doesn't make sense
- punctuation
- singular / plural
- spelling
Answer: apostrophes
There is an apostrophe missing from the end of 'minutes' in the last line of
this example. If the author had written '50 minutes away' an apostrophe after
'minutes' wouldn't be necessary because '50 minutes' is a straightforward
adverbial phrase, describing the distance between two places by reference to
a period of time. Because the author puts in a noun – 'drive' – after the
adverbial phrase ('50 minutes') they create a possessive relationship
between the '50 minutes' and the 'drive'. The meaning becomes: '50 minutes
of driving …' We can test out the need for an apostrophe here by looking at
what would happen if the minutes were reduced to just one minute: '1
minute's drive'. We still need an apostrophe; we couldn't write '1 minutes
drive' because since '1' is singular it cannot be followed by the plural noun
form 'minutes'. The author could have used the more straightforward phrase:
'a 50 minute drive away from …' but '50 minutes' drive away' must include an
apostrophe after 'minutes' (the plural form, because there are fifty of them) to
be grammatically correct.
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