February 17th, 2009
An apostrophe catastrophe
By Matthew Blackett // 10 Comments
A few weeks ago I posted about the new Toronto street signs which prompted a good debate amongst our readers about the pros-and-cons of the new design. But another kind of street sign debate is raging across the Atlantic. In Birmingham, England, city council has made the final decision to drop apostrophes from their street signs. Goodbye Queen's Park, hello Queens Park.
It seems that Birmingham officials have been taking a hammer to grammar for years, quietly dropping apostrophes from street signs since the 1950s. Through the decades, residents have frequently launched spirited campaigns to restore the missing punctuation to signs denoting such places as "St. Pauls Square" or "Acocks Green."
This week, the council made it official, saying it was banning the punctuation mark from signs in a bid to end the dispute once and for all.
Councilor Martin Mullaney, who heads the city's transport scrutiny committee, said he decided to act after yet another interminable debate into whether "Kings Heath," a Birmingham suburb, should be rewritten with an apostrophe.
"I had to make a final decision on this," he said Friday. "We keep debating apostrophes in meetings and we have other things to do."
...
But grammarians say apostrophes enrich the English language.
"They are such sweet-looking things that play a crucial role in the English language," said Marie Clair of the Plain English Society, which campaigns for the use of simple English. "It's always worth taking the effort to understand them, instead of ignoring them."
Mullaney claimed apostrophes confuse GPS units, including those used by emergency services. But Jenny Hodge, a spokeswoman for satellite navigation equipment manufacturer TomTom, said most users of their systems navigate through Britain's sometime confusing streets by entering a postal code rather than a street address.
photo by Rachel Canon
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Hey Matt, you jacked my story! Flattered, but WTF?
Jeremy:
Er, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Its a MSNBC article I link to. It was forwarded to me by a friend.
Eaton'a had a problem in Québec with its apostrophe on signs because of the language law. The apostrophe was removed, along with the "s".
Most businesses that want to do business in Québec now just drop the apostrophe.
So because the GPS doesn't understand apostrophes they get rid of them on signs?! I hope this is a joke. Imagine all the confused children learning their grammar in school, only to see grammatically-incorrect street signs everywhere.
On this subject, an Australian newspaper recently republished this imaginary apostrophe-less paragraph demonstrating its necessity:
""'Hell, hell kill me,' I could see her thinking as I moved towards her, 'Ill be ill if you touch me,' she said, 'Well, well see about that,' I thought. Id liberated her id and shed shed her virginity before wed wed, and I cant stand that sort of cant. 'The wanton wench wont as is her wont,' I thought despairingly. I wouldve killed her if I couldve, but if I hadve shedve stabbed me with one of her priceless objet darts. So I didnt."
Dylan, can you fit all of that on a street sign?
Here in Toronto on the corner of Wellesley and Queen's Park are two street signs; an older one that says "Queen's Park" and a newer bigger blue one that says "Queens Park". Not only in Birmingham, eh?
Well, it does make sense to have a policy rather than re-debating it for every street. But I do think they picked the wrong policy.
Anyone know what the local policy is? These could just be typos, but a couple of weird examples:
- On Harbourfront Centre's site map, the street is "Queens Quay West" but the building is the "Queen's Quay Terminal".
- On Google Maps, "Queen's Park Crescent W" and "Queen's Park Crescent E" merge to become a street named "Queens Park".
It's happening in Toronto too. Crothers' Woods (named after George Crothers), a place in the Don Valley has now appeared as Crothers Woods on new interpretive signs posted by the city.
It'll look so bland without apostrophes! And so un-English. But I understand the GPS problem. Maybe they should use lower case letters if using all caps (BENNETTs HILL) words or a subscript s. I don't think that would make any difference for GPS and it would be less all-the-same. Still. I prefer apostrophes.
Comment by Lisa
February 17, 2009 | 4:53 pm