Apostrophes abolished by council

Apostrophes in street signs have been banned by a council because its staff spend too much time dealing with complaints about grammar. From now on, no sign produced by Birmingham City Council will contain the punctuation mark.

Debates over whether Kings Norton really should be King's - or even Kings' - Norton may rage on, but they will be useless.

And nearby Druids Heath - which was never actually home to one, let alone many, druids - will never take on the possessive, no matter how furious local apostrophe advocates become. The council said the move had been taken for the purposes of consistency and to avoid costs and confusion over whether place names should ever take an apostrophe.



However the decision was described as "absolute defeatism" by John Richards, the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society.

"This is setting a terrible example," Mr Richards said. "It seems retrograde, dumbing down really. All over Birmingham, and in other cities, teachers are trying to teach children correct grammar and punctuation. Now children will go around Birmingham and see utter chaos."

Mr Richards suggested the move could prove to be the first step towards linguistic anarchy. "If you don't have apostrophes," he said, "is there any point in full stops, or semi-colons, or question marks? Is there any point in punctuation at all?"