On Street Names Signage Elsewhere in the "Anglosphere" and How Apostrophes Relate to That

[dewline]

dduane happened to spot this today:

http://arbroath.blogspot.ca/2013/03/council-bans-apostrophes-from-new.html

I don't know that good punctuation is an exclusively British characteristic, but I also shudder to think of the consequences of banishing the apostrophe to the memory hole.

How about you?

Comments

[mdg1.livejournal.com]

No, but the "Greengrocers' apostrophe" is (or was) fairly common in England.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Had to look that one up! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greengrocers%27_apostrophe#Greengrocers.27_apostrophes)

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how I feel. I certainly see no reason not to use an apostrophe for the possessive case. However, I tend to use other symbols (such as '~', the swung dash or "spacing tilde") to represent contractions, even at the end of a word (often replacing a period in those cases). As an example, I sometimes "Manager" as "Man~r". I~ve also used a hyphen to separate the plural "s" from the word it~s attached to (e.g. when referring to "multiple PC-s").