Apostrophes and Time Expressions

Please help to settle an argument. Just as "200 hours' community service" or "a moment's notice" require apostrophes to indicate possession, I believe "FIVE YEARS' VIP SERVICING" also merits one ("VIP SERVICING OF FIVE YEARS"). A copywriting colleague has got rather confused over his participles, gerunds, verbs and subjects. He fails to see the logic of testing the case by using an obvious singular-- eg, in "A YEAR'S VIP SERVICING" the "S" is clearly there to indicate possession rather than a plural. Can anyone help provide a straightforward explanation?

[RonBee]

I think five years' VIP servicing is fine. Why? I don't know. As I type this, I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet. :)

May I make a suggestion? I think the phrase would work better as five years of VIP servicing. What do you think?

:)

Thanks. Your suggestion (which we had also discussed) would avoid the ambiguity.

[Tdol]

Originally Posted by markbarnard

Please help to settle an argument. Just as "200 hours' community service" or "a moment's notice" require apostrophes to indicate possession, I believe "FIVE YEARS' VIP SERVICING" also merits one ("VIP SERVICING OF FIVE YEARS"). A copywriting colleague has got rather confused over his participles, gerunds, verbs and subjects. He fails to see the logic of testing the case by using an obvious singular-- eg, in "A YEAR'S VIP SERVICING" the "S" is clearly there to indicate possession rather than a plural. Can anyone help provide a straightforward explanation?

The S is there to show possession, if the apostrophe is before, it's singular, if it comes after it's plural. If your colleague were right, then there would be no S there at all, unless they are arguing that 'a years' is good English.