Old 97’s versus Lynne Truss
Published by Becky S July 19th, 2004 in arts, style & grammarWhy would Good Grief! sing the praises of the Old 97’s, a band with such an unorthodox use of the apostrophe? Some might call this apostrophe pesky. After many sleepless nights, I found the answer on the band’s website:
Why is it “Old 97’s” and not “Old 97s”? Are the Old 97’s confused about the rules of grammar? No. “Do any of you have Webster’s grammar books? If you do, look up the section on apostrophes. You will find that it’s OK, in order to prevent confusion, to add an apostrophe before an ’s’ when making something plural. For instance, if Johnny comes home from school and says, ‘I got two F’s today in attitude’, then he’s at least right grammatically. It would be confusing if he said, ‘Fs’. Get it? So five years ago we decided to invoke the rule and be ‘Old 97’s’ rather than ‘Old 97s’. Or ‘Old Nine-Seven-Ess’, as we would have probably be called. If you have ever seen our original demo, you’ll probably notice that we were ‘The Old 97’s’. I don’t remember why we changed. We just did.” - Ken Bethea (1998)No Tags
Now that you’ve gotten to the bottom of that, any idea how to pronounce the name of the band that goes by !!!?
Is there seriously a band called !!!? (Nice use of html, by the way). Has this band been formed recently? If so, they are not too bright; they should have considered how their name would impact online searches.
There is indeed a band that goes by that name, and I think I found the answer to my question here. Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed.
Chick-chick-chick or pow-pow-pow? How did you find out about these guys?
Keeny D told me about them. He’s kind of a music geek.