Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Apostrophe Catastrophe Continues

Earlier this month I blogged about about the lingua lunacy that's infiltrated elected officials in Birmingham, England. In short, they're ignoring them on public signs.
An updated dispatch from the Daily Telegraph indicates the good guys are still losing the good fight.
Wakefield Council in West Yorkshire said that it did not include the punctuation mark on road signs "to avoid confusion", even where the name was intended to take the possessive.
One of the good guys turns out to be the uncle of an EE Times colleague of mine, David Blaza.

Allan Blaza of the Pontefract Civic Society accused the council of ducking its responsibility to maintain standards.

He said: "I think it's a cop out. I'm sufficiently rigorous when it comes to the English language, which is a magnificent language, to feel sure that all the grammatical necessities – not niceties – should be observed."

Here, here, Mr. Blaza. Now that said, check out the photos here. The upper photo is from the earlier coverage and shows no apostrophe. The lower photo is from the more recent story. It has an apostrophe but appears to be a different sign placed in a slightly different position near the church.
So there's hope.

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