Hear'Say

Hear'Say are a British short lived manufactured pop group created in February 2001 from the winners of Popstars, an ITV reality TV show based on a New Zealand show of the same name. They enjoyed huge success with their debut single "Pure and Simple", helped by the publicity surrounding Popstars, the first of its kind in the UK. The group split eighteen months after their formation. All members have had greater success in their solo careers in acting, presenting and singing.

The reason for the apostrophe in the group's name was for a while open to conjecture. Some commentators said it was a deliberate attempt to appeal to a youthful audience by imitating an informal, uneducated style; others suggested it was simply a case of bad grammar on the part of its creator; but others say it was simply that the owner of the domain hearsay.com, refused to license the name to the band. In her bestselling book on punctuation, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the author Lynne Truss states that "the naming of Hear’Say in 2001 was a significant milestone on the road to punctuation anarchy." One explanation for its inclusion is that a Canadian band had already been using the name "Hearsay" since 1992. Interviewed on BBC1's Breakfast on June 4, 2008, Suzanne Shaw stated that the apostrophe was included because "it looked good on paper, it was a design thing".