Apostropheasible?

Leyla Williams gets possessive on apostrophes

GREENGROCERS’ apostrophes are apostrophes used incorrectly to form plurals. Or is that greengrocers apostrophe’s? For that matter, why not greengrocer’s apostrophes’

I got it right the first time. But given Birmingham City Council’s decree that possessive apostrophes no longer need appear on street signs, who really cares? Not Martin Mullaney, chairman of the transportation scrutiny committee, that’s for sure. The man behind the imminent death of Birmingham’s apostrophes puts forth his case in writing with linguistic perfection. Mullaney asked residents on his blog on January 2nd for their views on whether or not Kings Heath should have an apostrophe, since he needed to let the Transportation Department know if it should be included or not by January 7th.  

The process that followed was, thankfully, highly democratic. Not only did Mullaney make it clear that he only wanted the views of residents who had a ‘far greater understanding of apostrophes’ than him (because apparently the average Joe must not only be able to use apostrophes correctly, but have a deeper knowledge of them in order to have an input). It also followed that it didn’t really matter what the Eating and Shooting residents of Birmingham thought anyway. Despite constant demand from neighbourhoods across the city to give them back their punctuation, on January 28th Mullaney dropped the bomb that future use of possessive apostrophes in place names simply ‘would not be re-introduced’. 

His case?  Chiefly, we contemporary beings are just plain ‘confused’ by the apostrophe, especially in the West Midlands. So much so, that even when we do a little grammatical research and ask for our punctuation back, we’re probably more baffled than ever. Better to deal with ever-irrational residents by ignoring them and appealing to their hearts instead by arguing that it would be ‘tragic if the ambulance couldn’t find your street, if you forgot to include the possessive apostrophe when calling 999.’ 

Good point, Martin – because in this day and age, the emergency services are incapable of getting around such problems. The main mapping agency providing data for emergency services, Ordnance Survey, told the Associated Press that they’d ‘never heard of any confusion arising from their (apostrophes’) existence’, and that their data is simply updated if a change to a place name is made. 

So much for a bamboozled Birmingham. The only thing more nonsensical than stripping Birmingham of correct punctuation is turning a deaf ear to the voices of its residents.