Apostrophes
now: Britain at was over missing punctuation
AFP: Published 2014-03-26
06:04:03
LONDON:
A bizarre battle is raging in towns across Britain between lovers of the
English language and local councils that are culling the humble apostrophe from
street signs.
The
historic university city of Cambridge was the latest in a series of places this
year that have made the change, which transforms names such as King’s Road into
Kings Road.
Cambridge
was forced to backtrack after anonymous punctuation protectors mounted a
guerrilla campaign, going out in the dead of night and using black marker pens
to fill in the missing apostrophes.
The
punctuation pogrom by several municipalities is apparently in response to
central government advice aimed at helping the work of the emergency services.
Earlier
this year a teenager died of an asthma attack after an apostrophe error led to
an ambulance going to the wrong address.
“National
guidelines recommended not allocating new street names that required any
punctuation, as, we gather, this was not well coped with by some emergency
services’ software,” Tim Ward of Cambridge City Council told AFP. “Given the
public interest that this awakened we checked back on the national guidelines
that we’d followed when reviewing our policy, and found that the guideline
recommending against including punctuation in new street names had been
dropped.”
In
countries such as the United States and Australia, apostrophes disappeared from
street signs long ago.
But
moves to do the same in Britain have aroused the ire of the guardians of the
English language.
‘Commas will be next’
Kathy
Salaman, director of The Good Grammar Company, a Cambridge-based organisation
that provides training to companies, said the issue was not one of pedantry but
of upholding wider standards.
“If
they take our apostrophes, commas will be next,” she said. “In Britain the
tendency is now that if something is too difficult, let’s get rid of it. Why
are we trying to improve literacy when actually in real life people say it
doesn’t really matter?”
Salaman
defended the word-warriors who had restored punctuation to street signs.
“If
the apostrophe needs to be there, I don’t think it’s vandalism because I would
say the language is being vandalised,” she said.
While
Cambridge may have rescinded its apostrophe apocalypse, national authorities
said that they still prefer street signs without punctuation.
GeoPlace,
the organisation that oversees the production and maintenance of Britain’s
national address and street gazetteers, said the final decision rests with
local councils.
“However,
the Data Entry Conventions documentation does state that GeoPlace would prefer
not to receive data (including street names) with punctuation,” it said in a
statement, citing machine readability and usability by emergency services as
the reasons.
Dozens
of local councils around the country are still waging war on the apostrophe,
campaigners say.
“It’s
serious,” said John Richard, founder and chairman of the Apostrophe Protection
Society. “I don’t know why their computers couldn’t be trained to recognise an
apostrophe.”
He
also lamented a decline in general standards.
“I
think people are very lazy or very ignorant and the language is declining, is
getting worse,” he said. “It is setting a very bad example because teachers are
teaching our children punctuation and then they see road signs with apostrophes
removed.”Several councils have consulted the Plain English Campaign, an
independent group that has fought for clearer use of the language for more than
three decades, to see what they think.
Tony
Maher, the group’s general manager, said apostrophes were a problem for many
people.
“Personally,
I would leave the street names as they are in the hope that our children learn
how to use apostrophes correctly. I still see shops with ‘greengrocers’
apostrophes’ emblazoned in their windows such as ‘Apple’s - 20p, Orange’s 25p,
Sock’s #2’ and so on,” he said. “I think it is one argument that will continue
for many years to come.”—AFP
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