Saturday, January 31, 2009

Apostrophe catastrophe

I know that many of my friends are grammar and punctuation sticklers, and this will freak them all out. Birmingham, England, dumps the apostrophe from street signs that require it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Arrrrgh!

I'm ashamed to say, I am from Birmingham. This is RIDICULOUS!

Apostrophes are things you learn about at primary school... they're not that hard to figure out!

Anonymous said...

The thing that REALLY made me cringe was the mention of pubs offering "'chip's and pea's.'"

Delaney said...

The folks at Language Log pointed out that US maps already do that. Place names just don't get apostrophes.

Anonymous said...

I can get behind the street signs losing the apostrophes, but the "chip's and pea's" bugged me too. Apostrophes are NOT that hard!

Anonymous said...

I'm just shocked this didn't happen in my town first... Birmingham, Alabama. I'm sure we'll follow suit soon.