Point of Order: "The Marauders"

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 53390

I know that some people are going to feel that I'm deliberately out to 
offend them with this post. One of the reasons I'm going to refrain from 
quoting anyone in particular is precisely because I do NOT wish to do that. 
So I do apologise in advance if anyone takes this the wrong way...

What I'm talking about is collectively calling James Potter, Sirius Black, 
Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin "The Marauders", and I am seriously, 
honestly, curious why anyone would want to call them that. I get a bit of a 
nervous twitch every time I see the term and I'd like to explain why.

OK, the reason I can imagine most people would want to do so is because of 
the name of "The Marauder's Map". I really, really, don't want to repeat 
the rant about apostrophe abuse in general which started off a huge debate 
on the OT-Chatter list recently, but there is an apostrophe in 
"Marauder's", and its meaning is clear: there is *one* "Marauder". The 
Map's name is never, ever spelt any other way. I actually searched through 
PoA and GoF, and the Map's name appears in the text 15 and 10 times 
respectively, on top of which it's the title of Chapter Ten of PoA and thus 
appears as a header at the top of 20 pages (in the UK edition at least). 
Having seen the name written down so many times, I'm a bit of a loss as to 
why in several messages recently, it's been spelt "Marauders' Map", or 
worse, "Marauders Map".

Considering some theories floating around HP fandom depend quite literally 
on the interpretation of elements of punctuation, please forgive me if I 
find it a little wanting when people are unable to copy down a word they've 
seen so many times. As per the conversation on OT-Chatter, I fully 
appreciate that some people only have audio versions of the books, and some 
have dyslexia or other writing/reading disorders, but I do find the 
frequency of this mis-spelling alarming, especially by adult (or at least, 
"grown up") readers.

What's so important about that little apostrophe? Well, at various points 
in my life I've worked in the tourism industry and have become acquainted 
with the term "Visitor's Map/Plan", as I assume have most people, as 
visitors if not authors or distributors. Were these maps written by 
visitors (or even one visitor)? No, of course not. They were written by 
people who knew what they were talking about *for the benefit* of Visitors 
(or a single Visitor for each map).

I take the name of the Marauder's Map in an analogous sense. Besides, I 
can't imagine the authors calling themselves "Marauders", which has zero 
positive connotations (at least in my mind, as a native speaker of British 
English). Furthermore, I don't see "a plunderer; one who pillages" (my 
dictionary's definition) fits the foursome. They were in search of 
adventure rather than thievery. The definition fits Gred & Forge pretty 
well, though (they use the Map to get food from the kitchens and party 
supplies from Honeydukes).

I don't remember whether it was here or in some other forum, but someone 
once said "well, they had to call themselves *something*". As it happens,
1) well, no they didn't. Harry, Ron and Hermione, who appear just as 
closely allied to each other in their adventures, don't have a "gang name".
2) they *do* call themselves something: in what I consider a typical dig at 
pomposity (and the names of British law firms), they call themselves 
Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs.

The thing is, the two members of the foursome who've talked about those 
days, Remus and Sirius, have never, ever, referred to themselves as "The 
Marauders", but they both use their aliases when referring to their 
schooldays.

With all that said, I repeat my original question: what reasonable grounds 
does anyone have to call them "The Marauders"? Of course, for online 
purposes, we use abbreviations and acronyms all over the place and this is 
no exception. If we constantly refer to Harry, Ron and Hermione 
collectively as HRH (or, some people, HHR), why not use what the foursome 
called themselves as the basis for an acronym: MWPP? Well, that's what I 
and several other people do, and I don't have a problem with anyone using a 
reasonable basis for an acronym, but to be brutally honest, I consider use 
of "The Marauders" in this context to betray a sloppy command of grammar 
and a sloppy appreciation of the nuances of the name, which hardly befits 
the highly detailed analysis which the books undergo.

As I said at the top, I don't mean to talk down to anyone and I apologise 
if my typically strident and aggressive phrasing has offended anyone. I do 
appreciate that these kind of things get accepted by common usage, but I 
for one, as a grammar nazi (to use a term which cropped up several times on 
OT-Chatter) :-) will fight for correct usage until my dying breath... ;-)

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who is beginning to think about another Point of Order 
post about the British Muggle school system and associated terminology on 
which Hogwarts is clearly based, and which has implications for the future...