No, it’s not April Fools’ Day…
Extract from The Huffington Post:
Councillors in Devon are considering banning apostrophes from their street signs because of the “potential confusion” the punctuation causes…
Council communications manager Andrew Lacey said: “Our proposed policy on street naming and numbering covers a whole host of practical issues, many of which are aimed at reducing potential confusion over street names. Although there is no national guidance that stops apostrophes being used, for many years the convention we’ve followed here is for new street names not to be given apostrophes.”
I would love to see a ban on the so-called ‘grocer’s apostrophe’ (much loved by some of my former students – let’s not malign grocers!), when apostrophes are used for apparently decorative purposes eg ‘apple’s’ rather than ‘apples’.
The apostrophe is a helpful little chap when used as God intended. See my free punctuation guide if you’re not quite sure.
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