Guerrilla grammar campaigners with indelible marker pens are on the rampage in Cambridge following the blanket removal of apostrophes from street signs by the city council. The decision was taken following advice issued by the National Land & Property Gazetteer (NLPG), who maintain the definitive list of place names in England and Wales, and ensure that all land and property has a unique identifier. So why no apostrophes? It seems the extremely clever database which holds all this information – the snappily named GeoPlace – can’t geographically place anything with punctuation. Apostrophes confuse it, hyphens throw it into a flat spin, and one can only imagine how it might react to a semi-colon.
The NLPG claim that punctuation could lead to a delayed response from emergency services searching for ‘Howard’s Way’ instead of ‘Howards Way’, or even ‘Howards’ Way’, and that to reduce this risk we should eradicate punctuation and simplify all future street names. And so the tail wags the dog. If a computer system can’t understand punctuation, then surely it should be redesigned so that it can? Instead the powers-that-be issue a decree to councils, who in turn dig into their publicly funded coffers for loose change to replace any street signs in breach of the rules. It’s a travesty. The apostrophe is part of the heritage of our language, and indeed of our culture: the ‘grocers’ apostrophe’, as seen in chalked lists of ‘apple’s and pear’s’ for sale, is as iconic and warming to a Englishman as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
Generally speaking, there is more public sympathy for a misplaced apostrophe than an erased one. When Waterstones announced they were abandoning the apostrophe in their name because it was ‘more practical’ in a digital world to do without it, there was an outcry. Had the shop signs not been so high off the ground, they would perhaps have received the same marker pen treatment Scholars Place did in Cambridge. Thank heavens for guerrilla grammarians. It is ironic that Cambridge – the home of one of the world’s most famous universities – should be so quick to abandon good grammar, but heartening to know that there are still some grammar loyalists willing to risk police action (defacing a sign is criminal damage, after all) in support of the humble apostrophe.
Abandoning punctuation to make it easier for a computer? What a load of %’*@.