Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
After getting very excited about a rumor floating around the nets yesterday afternoon that Pope Francis had thrown the disgraced Bernard, Cardinal Law out of the Vatican on his monstrous backside, a rumor that now appears to be unfounded, ol’ Robbo came to the realization that it is time to calm down, take a deep breath and just wait to see what happens.
So instead, I give you this: Council bans apostrophes from all street signs to avoid ‘confusion’.
Mid-Devon District Council said its new streets had not contained apostrophes for many years but the policy was now being made official.
Residents and plain English campaigners criticised the move, but the council said apostrophes could only be found in three street names in the district.
It added that Beck’s Square and Blundell’s Avenue both in Tiverton and St George’s Well in Cullompton were all named many years ago.
Andrew Lacey, of Mid-Devon District Council, said there was no national guidance that stops apostrophes being used.
But proofreader Mary de Vere Taylor from Ashburton said the thought of apostrophes being removed made her shudder.
I shudder, too. Indeed, the grammar aside, I find myself mystified at what possible “confusion” could result from the difference between “Beck’s” and “Becks” Square. Would the presence of the apostrophe be enough to distract a lorry driver, causing him to careen straight through the plate-glass window of a nearby china shop?
In my misspent yoot, we lived next door to some people I will call the Smiths. They had a little plaque on their mailbox pillar that read “the Smith’s” which the Mothe routinely mocked to our tender ears. Indeed, these folks became known in the family vocabulary as “the Smith-apostrophe-s”.
I never forgot that. It was, perhaps, a rayther more brutal form of grammatickal education than the Schoolhouse Rock ditties on the teevee, but it was quite effective for all that.
In fact, the rules of apostrophe usage are really quite easy. If the Mid-Devon District Council is so concerned as to feel compelled to take O-fficial action, instead of dumbing down the street signs may I suggest that they stock the local library with copies of Lynne Truss’s The Girl’s Like Spaghetti: Why, You CAN’T Manage Without Apostrophes!
UPDATE: Here’s a nifty little article on the historickal development of the possessive apostrophe, a story that has always given me a great deal of geeky pleasure.
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March 16, 2013 at 2:31 pm
Vicki
Which is precisely why I don’t hang up the Christmas wreath a former friend had made for us, with our family surname-apostrophe-s. Even as the alleged grammarian in the house, I still don’t know if that’s the proper form and frankly I’m too lazy to find out.
As to the new Pope…I’m amazed that so many in the left-leaning media and such have their collective knickers in a knot over the fact that the new Pope is – GASP! – very much Catholic. Did they expect Catholic lite?
March 16, 2013 at 3:01 pm
Robbo
The apostrophe is easy. You use it either to indicate a contraction (“it’s” = “it is”) or a possessive (“Tom’s house” = “the house that belongs to Tom”). The Mothe used to say of the Smith sign “It’s OUR house, dammit!” So no, the wreath is not correct.
As for the Pope, I fear that the media, now that it has sunk in he won’t turn the Catholic Church into the Episcopal, will now get busy vilifying him as a clueless, cut-off, boot-stomping humbug who probably has his own closet full of molested skeletons somewhere.
March 17, 2013 at 3:25 am
mothe
What could the Mothe possibly have meant by ‘It’s OUR house?’ You have to help her out here. She’s been trying to remember, and now her brain hurts.
Good for you, Vicki, I wouldn’t hang up that wreath either.