Just a tiny little grammar rant...

I was standing at a co-worker’s cube, when I glanced at a magazine. This is a very slick magazine put out by a vendor (that I’d never heard of, but that’s beside the point.)

On the cover was a picture of a Tour de France rider, and the caption read:

Winning the Tour de France by a “hairs-breadth” (sic)
AAARRGGGHHH! Two mistakes in one!

Well, at least it did not read “by a hare’s breath.” :slight_smile:

Oooh! I’ve been hoping for a thread I could shoehorn this into:

I saw a guy standing on a street corner the other day, holding a professionally made sign that said “Half price tatoos!”

Er, could I pay full price and get you to spell it right?

He’d probably misspell “mom” and put “wow.” Heh.

As in a W on each buttock?

<snerk>

What’s the second?

It should have been Hare’s. Possessive.

I’m getting a few results here:

Meriam-Webster (as a variant): hairsbreadth

Wordnet: Accepts the spelling above, and also hair’s-breadth

An uncomfortable word. It makes me think of a hirsute baker. And now you will, too. :slight_smile:

Possesive was the one I saw. Are you sure about “hare”. 9,000 hits on google vs 200,00 for hair’s. Including this one

OK. . . I always thought it was hair’s breadth. Like, a hair is very narrow, and it’s breadth is just a wee little distance. “Hare’s” breadth? Like, the width of a bunny rabbit? In what manner does that make sense as an idiom?

Hair’s breadth is the only one that makes sense to me.

  1. Possessive.
  2. There should be no quotes!

And the hyphen ain’t strictly necessary either.

How interesting I should have read this just now! There just so happens to be a hairy man in my kitchen baking a cheesecake as I post. :smiley:

Fuck! That’s what I meant. Stupid multitasking!

Watch out, that could be beefcake! :stuck_out_tongue:
A hare’s breadth is, of course, the width of the International Standard Rabbit, which is kept at the Jardin Zoologique de Paris, under the auspices of the Societé Internationale des Metaphores Betiales.

I agree with the argument that there should be an apostrophe, but I think the case for the quotation marks is arguable. Presumably the rider didn’t literally win by a hair’s-breadth, but by a much larger distance. In this case the quotes can be justified as emphasizing that a colloquialism is being used, not a literal measurement.

Are you “down” with that? :slight_smile:

We shall have beefcake later this evening in the budoir.

Ahh, don’t get me started on cheesecakes! :smiley:

Polycarp-- that made me smile.