Humble apostrophe reprieved in council U turn (original) (raw)

The humble apostrophe won a significant battle in its fight for survival yesterday as Mid Devon council announced a U-turn over its ban on using the punctuation mark in street names.

Amid fears that there would be “potential confusion” among residents over the spelling of road names, the council declared last week that “all punctuation, including apostrophes, shall be avoided” in the naming of streets.

The move led to widespread condemnation from English language purists, as outraged grammarians called on the leader of Mid Devon council, councillor Peter Hare-Scott, to reverse the veto.

Bowing to punctuational pressure, Mr Hare-Scott said he was “not happy” about the long-standing exclusion of apostrophes from the region’s street names and would be recommending an amendment to the new policy, which would have made the ban official.

He said: “The convention not to use apostrophes when naming new streets has been in place since long before this administration took over.

“Personally I’m not happy about using English that’s incorrect and don’t find this acceptable. We are reviewing the situation and I shall be recommending to cabinet on March 28 that they amend the policy so that street names may indeed in future have apostrophes.”

Spotted in the small print of a council report last week, the original announcement prompted a leading article in The Times on Saturday which proclaimed: “The punctilious urge to tidy up the language by excising apostrophes from proper names is admittedly found outside Devon and it appears to be spreading. But there are good reasons for avoiding that temptation.”

It added: “Those who use [the apostrophe] heedlessly or dispense with it will, contrary to the aims of Mid Devon’s municipal authorities, provoke disarray where they intend only neatness and comprehension. Mark it well.”

The ban on the apostrophe was part of a range of road-naming policies in Mid Devon, which included calls to avoid names that “may be considered or construed as obscene or racist” and also road names that “may be open to re-interpretation by graffiti or shorting of the name”.

It adds: “In order to avoid causing offence either by inclusion or exclusion, no street shall be named after any living person.

“All punctuation, including apostrophes, shall be avoided.”

There are currently only a handful addresses in Mid Devon that include an apostrophe, and these are Beck’s Square and Blundell’s Avenue and Blundell’s Road, all in Tiverton, and St George’s Well in Cullompton.

It remains unclear what “confusion” would be remedied by banning such apostrophes from future street names. On the contrary, it has been remarked that, in Bakers View, in Newton Abbot, the lack of apostrophe creates uncertainty over who is doing the viewing and whether it is a single baker, a whole group of bakers or, indeed, a person called Baker.

John Richards, 89, Chairman of the Apostrophe Protection Society last week described the move as “appalling, disgusting and pointless”.

Andy Southgate, headmaster of Blundell’s Preparatory School in Blundell’s Road, Tiverton — both with apostrophes — welcomed the council’s change of heart. “What hope would we have in teaching children punctuation if it has been removed from society and all of the road signs?” he asked. “If we don’t need one in Blundell’s Road, they would ask why they need them in their essays.”

St Andrew’s Church, located on Blundell’s Road in Tiverton, is the keeper of no fewer than two of Mid Devon’s endangered apostrophes. Peter Dickinson, a churchwarden, said it would be “a bit silly” to do away with the apostrophe, but said he was more concerned when local cafés put up signs offering “coffee’s and cake’s” [sic] than with the punctuation in road signs.