From the BBC: “North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs.” Some residents are displeased:
Resident Anne Keywood did not think the changes were worthwhile.So too with commas.
She said: “I think we should be using apostrophes.
“If you start losing things like that[,] then everything goes downhill[,] doesn’t it?”
Related reading
All OCA apostrophe and punctuation posts (Pinboard) : Apostrophe Protection Society
[Hard to decide if the BBC was having a laugh here or just being sloppy. The missing quotation mark is fine, but it seems mighty strange to break up that quotation over two paragraphs.]
comments: 2
I've written to the BBC before about their word usage. The first time, I have forgotten about, but I think they took action and fixed it. The second time, I read a misused word in the morning, and when I checked in the evening they had fixed it. (Surely others wrote in too) That word was "disinterested." (They, and/or their US stringer, had thought it meant uninterested)
Bryan Garner thinks Brits are more casual about punctuation than Americans are. He may be right. I’ll e-mail them and see what happens,
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