sanity and civilisation fight back.

[Ken Gargett]

 

Pedants’ revolt brings back their apostrophe

Hampshire villagers have defied a council ban on possessives — and won

Will Humphries

, Southwest Correspondent

Saturday November 18 2023, 12.01am GMT, The Times

 

Oliver Gray, a former teacher, said: “An ambulance isn’t going to say, ‘Oh look, there’s an apostrophe’”

 

Residents of St Mary’s Terrace are celebrating after the possessive apostrophe was returned to their street sign.

Villagers in Twyford, near Winchester, were upset when the punctuation mark disappeared from new street furniture as part of a council ban supposedly aimed at making signs easier for paramedics and delivery drivers.

Oliver Gray, 75, a former language teacher, complained about “the missing apostrophe” and told the council: “There definitely should be one there, firstly for reasons of correctness and secondly because that is the street’s name, according to both the Land Registry and the Ordnance Survey.”

Gray was astonished to learn that Winchester council had adopted a “no apostrophe” policy for all new signs.

In February Tony Bronk, a local councillor, asked for an explanation at a council meeting. He said: “When this assumed error was questioned, the answer given was that the council’s policy required that all new street name signs must omit any apostrophe formerly shown on such signage.”

 

Martin Tod, the Liberal Democrat council leader, replied: “I’m aware that this is a topic where emotions can run surprisingly high — and where having a clear policy will be helpful in managing this. Clear and unambiguous street and place names are vital for postal and other delivery services and also for the emergency services, and punctuation can make that more difficult, particularly with modern computer systems.

“Our default approach is to make signs that use the spelling recorded in the systems used by the emergency services, the National Land and Property Gazetteer.”

He said that following guidance from the Ordnance Survey and the Local Government Association, new street names did not include punctuation. The LGA and OS established GeoPlace in 2011 as a definitive national database of addresses and streets in the UK. The business provides technical guidance to local authorities on data collection and advises that punctuation should not be provided. On its website, GeoPlace says it “does not advise that councils include or remove punctuation in official naming or on the street name plate” but it “would prefer not [to] receive data including street names with punctuation”.

The reasons given for removing punctuation are because it can be misinterpreted by computer systems and it is faster for emergency services to search their database without using punctuation. However, Tod agreed that the new sign was “confusing” and “not in line with residents’ wishes” and agreed the old sign could be reinstated.

When Sue Cook, a city councillor, discovered the old sign was still in the council dump, she made sure it was dug out, renovated and reinstalled.

Gray, a self-professed punctuation pedant, said the council’s justification for removing punctuation was “bonkers”. He added: “Driving down the road, an ambulance isn’t going to say, ‘Oh look, there’s an apostrophe’. I think there’s a national thing where we’re trying not to bother with apostrophes, driven by text speech and spell check. Some people have been moaning that there shouldn’t be a full stop after the ‘Saint’ but I’m not getting involved in that — it’s too controversial.”

[Fugu]

Pedants!?