Wednesday, August 19, 2009

'Punctuation hero' branded a vandal for painting apostrophes on street signs

From the Daily Mail:


After enduring sloppy punctuation on the street sign outside his home for more than a year, Stefan Gatward could stand it no longer.
The 62-year-old former soldier decided to launch a one-man crusade against 'dumbed down' Britain, and picked up a paintbrush to insert a missing apostrophe.
This turned the incorrect St Johns Close into the correct St John's Close.

3 comments:

Bob McDonnell said...

I saw this sign myself. It is an aposthrope abuse example and a grammatical "fail."

http://tinyurl.com/lbj8xo

Melissa (from Idaho) said...

Unfortunately, the USGS has had a policy for a hundred years about not using apostrophes in place names. I'm sure there's a reason - maybe simplicity, but I'm not a fan. Actually, there's a pretty good article here

I never thought about it, but the government really isn't a fan of apostrphes at all. Maybe because they don't know how to use them properly.

Tim Acheson said...

Stefan Gatward deserves our full support in his noble crusade against bad English!

Does anybody have his email address? I'd very much like to hear his opinion on the use of dashes in web addresses:-

http://www.timacheson.com/Blog/2009/aug/friendly_url_should_not_use_dashes_to_represent_spaces