Much ado about quotes in new 5pound note
A new polymer 5-pound note issued by the Bank of England in September 2016 has been much in the news: from its supposed indestructibility to the use of beef tallow in its production to rare serial numbers – now a new one concerns grammar in its text.
Fans of the iconic Winston Churchill say he would not have minded what the British news media called “a major grammatical blunder”, but quite a few grammar fundamentalists don’t quite like the fact that his famous quote in the note’s text does not include quotation marks.
This is the latest example of objections to the ways in which the English language is used in public and official discourse. A Bristol grammar enthusiast was recently in the news for furtively going around correcting apostrophes and commas in signs and shop boards.
It seems not many can pardon the respected Bank of England for using Churchill’s words in his inaugural speech to the House of Commons as the prime minister on May 13, 1940: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat” --- without the quotation marks. As the British news media went to town on how nobody had noticed it, a spokeswoman for the National Literacy Trust said: "If you are referencing a quotation word-for-word, use double quotation marks at the start and end of the quoted section”.
But Lisa Appignanesi of the Royal Society of Literature believes the mistake probably wouldn't have bothered Churchill: “I don't know, orator that he was, whether he would have noticed the missing punctuation.”
According to Tara Stubbs, English lecturer at the University of Oxford, such omissions were “condescending”.