An apostrophic debacle
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I recently read an article about Birmingham City Council refusing to make use of the apostrophe on any signs they produce from here on in. Furthermore, their spokesperson suggested that they had in fact been attempting to phase out this valuable piece of punctuation since as early as the 1950s.
Birmingham is located in the West Midlands and is on my radar because it's not far from where I live in Coventry. I occasionally have the misfortune of travelling there and was saddened to hear that, rather than attempting to learn the English language, they'd instead decided to deface it.
Many neighbouring cities have a friendly rivalry and Coventry and Birmingham is no different. Rightly or wrongly, Coventrians tend to regard Brummies with a level of cordial derision, while in return Brummies make bizarre pigeon noises at us and increase the pitch of their voice when they get wound up. In Coventry, we're often baffled by the association those from other regions seem to make between us and Birmingham, regarding our accents to be altogether different.
But nothing has made me want to disassociate myself further from the larger city than this flagrant disregard from the fairly simple concept of using the apostrophe correctly. The council has argued that they received so many complaints from people about the way they were using apostrophes incorrectly, that they decided to stop using them altogether. Can you imagine using that argument as a pupil in a school? "I'm sorry, Miss, but since I can't grasp how to punctuate my sentences, I've decided not to bother." When I was at school you would have been told off and made to redo your work with the missing punctuation. But Birmingham have decided to eschew education in favour of ignorance. (Some Coventrians might argue that this isn't a recent development. This author declines to comment in writing.)
Admittedly, the apostrophe has a wide variety of uses. But since the majority of signs that Birmingham's council (or any other council) will use them on are for the possessive form, there really is no excuse to get them wrong.
Apostrophes are used before an s for the possessive singular.
A car's horn
Craig's blog
Apostrophes are used after the s in a possessive plural (where the plural ends in an s).
The cars' horns (the horns of more than one car)
When the plural doesn't end in an s, an s is added with an apostrophe before it.
The children's play area
Contrary to popular belief, names and proper nouns that end in an s should technically have an apostrophe and another s when in the possessive form.
St. James's Park
But on this matter there are some concessions, and it is accepted (albeit not necessarily correct) usage to omit the final s.
St James' Park
All towns and cities are free to decide how they spell and punctuate their names. Unfortunately, this means that Birmingham's council is perfectly within its rights to choose idiocy over intellect. I can only hope that such obscene disregard for the language from a public body is limited to this one city and is not allowed to spread.