Apostrophes to be removed from street signs to avoid issues with databases

NORTH Yorkshire Council has said it will remove apostrophes from street signs in order to avoid potential problems with computer databases.

The council said all new street signs would be produced without the punctuation mark, regardless of any previous use.

A spokesperson for the council said it had decided to “eliminate” the apostrophe from street signs "along with many other [councils] across the country" in order to conform with formatting standards.

They added: "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 (e.g. apostrophes, hyphens and ampersands) to avoid potential problems when searching the databases as these characters have specific meanings in computer systems."

Sam, a postal worker and former teacher, told the BBC of her unhappiness with a new sign at St Mary’s Walk which has no apostrophe, although one has been added in pen. "I walk past the sign every day and it riles my blood to see inappropriate grammar or punctuation,” she said.

Anne Keywood, who lives nearby, agreed. "If you start losing things like that then everything goes downhill doesn't it?”

Dr Ellie Rye, a lecturer in English language and linguistics at the University of York told the BBC how apostrophes help provide context and clarity. "In writing you could say they might disambiguate things that could be ambiguous, so they differentiate between two St Marys walking down the street arm in arm, and 'I live on St Mary's Walk', but in practice those two statements aren't really ambiguous.

"If I say I live on St Mary's Walk, we're expecting a street name or an address of some kind."