Talk:manufacturers representative

I still regard this one as a misspelling. DCDuring commented before that he sees it as attributive use (something like "games room"?), but that doesn't feel like normal English to me for this kind of phrase. What do others think? Equinox ◑ 19:56, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, I think that a manufacturers representative is someone who represents or claims to or aspires to represent (multiple) manufacturers. DCDuring (talk) 23:21, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Still an odd pattern to me. It's a "children's author", not a "children author". Equinox ◑ 23:26, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

I'll bet I can many unexceptionable instances, like governors conference, of plural nouns in position one in NPs of this (noun-noun) form. DCDuring (talk) 23:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Again I see that as a sloppy error for "governors' conference". I suppose there's no statistical way to tell error from alternative! I have been a voracious reader all my life and have virtually never seen such forms, though. Equinox ◑ 23:35, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

It seems that the attributive plural is less common (1:3-1:4) than the possessive plural per Google N-Gram. (I couldn't give you a link that worked. I used case-insensitive search for "governors conference" and "governor ' s conference".) DCDuring (talk) 23:42, 21 September 2017 (UTC)