Addressing an issue of the English language
‘‘ Countdown’s very own Susie Dent was even called upon to share her learned opinion
There was something of a furore this week, when a council up north announced it was to ban apostrophes on street signs.
It has been reported that North Yorkshire Council is getting rid of the punctuation mark as it claims it causes problems with the authority’s computer systems.
A council spokesperson said: “All punctuation will be considered but avoided where possible because street names and addresses, when stored in databases, must meet the standards set out in BS7666.
“This restricts the use of punctuation marks and special characters (eg apostrophes, hyphens and ampersands) to avoid potential problems when searching the databases as these characters have specific meanings in computer systems.”
But residents spoken to by the BBC were unhappy at the ruling and want the council to stick with apostrophes or risk “everything going downhill”.
On the BBC Breakfast television show, presenter John Kay said they were flooded with an unprecedented number of calls when they discussed the issue on air.
While Countdown’s very own guardian of dictionary corner, Susie Dent, was even called up by the television news to share her learned opinion on what some see as a dumbing-down of language.
The ever-diplomatic Susie pointed out that our language has always been evolving, and it is true the apostrophe is a relatively recent addition to the written word.
And in the context of a road name an apostrophe is not really needed to differentiate between the plural and the possessive for an address to do its job of identifying a location.
I must admit I am with Susie on the fluid nature of language and – with my author’s hat on – having spent a long time studying old newspapers, I can see how the written word has changed over time, largely for the better I would argue.
But we have our very own perplexing examples closer to home, like this one: admittedly it’s not a street name, but why is the lovely venue in Albert Road, The Kings Theatre and not The King’s (or Kings’ even)?