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During the week it dawned on me that a sentence I was using in my c.v. and web site might have an error.

The sentence was "I have over 10 years experience in IT".

A few weeks back I read Lynne Truss's "Eat, Shoots and Leaves" which is all about the misuse of the apostrophe and other punctuation issues.

Looking again at my c.v. I suddenly thought: "hang on, shouldn't it be 10 years' experience?".

But then again, I don't really believe that the years possess the experience. It's me who's had the experience after all.

I contacted by e-mail Frank, a friend of mine, who now translates business Spanish to English for universities in Spain. Before that he was an English teacher in several countries.

His reply was that the apostrophe was indeed needed. Bother, that meant I had to change my c.v. and web site in various places.

As well as replying to me Frank accidentally included the email address of someone else. It took a few days to work out what had happened. By coincidence this person was a German teacher. He replied to Frank with his view that the apostrophe wasn't needed. That's what I wanted to hear.

But Frank then quoted a similar example from The Economist where the apostrophe was used.

I'll happily argue with translators, language tutors, even Karate purple belts but I won't argue with The Economist.

Meantime I had been browsing the web and came across www.grammarerrors.com.

They didn't have the answer but did have a form with which you could ask questions. So, I asked the question and within an hour I had a reply. It concurred that the apostrophe was required.

And thinking about it you'd say:

"I have one year's experience"

So, you'd say "I have two years' experience" and therefore it's "I have 10 years' experience".

Whilst custom often beats logic when it comes to punctuation punch ups in this case they agree.

My web site will be updated soon.