Malcolm Wood, an English teacher in North Yorkshire, did a double take recently as he passed by a quiet street, St. Mary’s Walk. The new street sign had no apostrophe.
The change, part of North Yorkshire Council’s move to gradually remove apostrophes from its road signs, has sparked dissent in Harrogate, a Victorian spa town in northern England. Shortly after the new sign was erected, someone drew an apostrophe on it.
“If you get rid of the apostrophe, what’s next?” said Mr. Wood, who has spent years teaching students the rules of English grammar. “Commas? Final points?” He asked, “Do we only use emojis?”
North Yorkshire Council said its policy of phasing out apostrophes was not new.
“We appreciate that residents value the meaning and history behind official street names, which often date back centuries, and that removing punctuation is seen as a lowering of standards,” said Karl Battersby, council’s environment director, in a statement on Thursday. . “However, the decision has benefits, such as helping to prevent complications when searching databases, for example.” He said the council would review the matter.
Andrew Jones, Member of Parliament for the Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency in North Yorkshire, sent a letter to the council chairman on Wednesday on behalf of several constituents who had complained that apostrophes had been removed from signs on St Mary’s Walk. . and King’s Road in Harrogate.
“We spend time, effort and money educating children about the correct use of punctuation, so our councils should also use punctuation correctly,” Jones said in a statement urging the council to reverse its policy.
The apostrophe policy was reported last month by a local news site, The Stray Ferret, after a resident complained to the publication about the new St. Mary’s Walk sign.
While some grammarians said apostrophes were as essential as proper spelling, others said they served no real purpose.
John McWhorter, a linguist and associate professor at Columbia University, said he winces a little when he sees a misused apostrophe, but is never confused about the writer’s meaning.
“Ultimately, there is no coherent argument that apostrophes help achieve clarity,” said Dr. McWhorter, who writes a weekly column for The New York Times. They are simply “a kind of decoration,” he added.
Dr. McWhorter said apostrophes were the “fish forks” of punctuation. “They sit there, you’re not quite sure how to use them; you will almost certainly misuse them.”
Apostrophes crept into written English for arbitrary reasons, Dr. McWhorter said. “It’s just another way to belittle people who have never mastered ‘their’ and ‘is’ when we should really be thinking about how effectively they get their message across.”
Debates over grammar use stir strong feelings because language is an important part of identity, said Ellie Rye, an English professor at York University in England. Still, in the history of the English language, apostrophes are “pretty modern,” she said. They were not used to mark possession until the 16th century, to a limited extent, and more widely in the 17th or 18th centuries, Dr Rye said.
Over the years, apostrophes have been dropped from some British shop names, such as one of Harrogate’s most famous shops, Bettys Café Tea Rooms, which dropped its apostrophe decades ago. The British bookstore Waterstones, founded by Tim Waterstone, removed the apostrophe from its name in 2012.
Bob McCalden, president of the Apostrophe Protection Society, a small group in Britain focused on promoting proper use of the apostrophe, said he had no problem with companies removing apostrophes from their names, but that gradually removing them from street names was “cultural vandalism.” “
Dropping the apostrophe from St. Mary’s Walk obscured the history of the street, which is named after nearby St. Mary’s Church, he said. “We should recognize and celebrate our social history, rather than trying to erase it.”
McCalden said he was drafting a letter to the chief executive of North Yorkshire Council to try to persuade him to reverse his decision. There is precedent: a decade ago, Cambridge City Council reversed its decision to remove apostrophes from new road names. Last year, after residents complained that a new sign for St. Mary’s Terrace did not have an apostrophe, local leaders replaced the sign with one that did.
Harrogate writer Rebecca Evans acknowledged that languages change over time. But she said the council’s reason for changing the signs was boring. “It’s kind of sad if computer software dictates how the city’s language is changing,” she said.
McCalden, who is also a retired director of information technology, wondered what computer system couldn’t deal with apostrophes. He said that in the case of the post office, for example, it’s not like postal employees said of their computer system, “Oh my God, it went down because we came across an apostrophe in a street name.”