The apostrophe's death sentence and reprieve

Fun and games in the press this week because a council in Devon decided, in the small print of a report, to remove "all punctuation, including apostrophes" in the naming of streets, ostensibly to avoid confusion.

The Times went into battle with a leading article, reproduced below, headed "Punctuation's Perplexities".  This explains in great detail why the apostrophe is such a useful little mark and why it is worth mastering its use.  The attention seems to have had the desired effect and Mid Devon Council announced yesterday that they had had a change of heart.  The headmaster of a local preparatory school commented "What hope would we have in teaching children punctuation if it has been removed from society and all of the road signs?".  Exactly!

"Punctuation's Perplexities

'The rules governing this vexing little mark are evidently hard to master,' wrote Kingsley Amis about the apostrophe, 'and if you have any trouble with them or it after the age of 14 or so, the chances are that you will always be liable to error in the matter.'
That reasoning appears to have occurred also to the Mid Devon District Council. But the inference that the council has drawn from it would have provoked a visceral response from the celebrated author and professional curmudgeon. Apostrophes have progressively fallen into disuse in Mid-Devonian street names. They are now to be banished altogether, to 'avoid potential confusion'.
The council does not say what the confusion consists in or who risks suffering it, but the proposed remedy is surely intended to be helpful. Any residents who have not yet mastered the conventions of English punctuation will be spared the effort of wondering what these are and the inconvenience of learning them.
Except, of course, they won’t. Beyond the borders of Mid Devon, and in newspapers and other publications that intrude within them, the apostrophe will remain in use. Its great virtue as a mark of punctuation is that it aids clarity and dispels confusion. It signals the omission of a letter, or the quality of possession and (if so) whether the possession is held singly or plurally. It enables the reader to tell apart a plural and a genitive. The residents of Mid Devon should have the uncontested right to share those benefits, which are enjoyed by the rest of the English-speaking world.
For example, in the town of Newton Abbott, in Devon, lies Bakers View. It is not “Baker’s” View, even though it is named for a man called Baker. This is Sir Samuel Baker, the Victorian explorer and naturalist, who worked to suppress the slave trade in Southern Sudan. In omitting the apostrophe, the council has already ensured that Baker’s name will diminish into unmerited obscurity.
The punctilious urge to tidy up the language by excising apostrophes from proper names is admittedly found outside Devon and it appears to be spreading. But there are good reasons for avoiding that temptation.
Waterstone’s, the bookseller, changed its name last year to Waterstones. Its declared aim in doing so was to shift the emphasis from its founder to its branches and employees. That is a benign intention. It would, however, have been better advanced, especially in the case of a company whose business is the written word, by adopting the name Waterstones’.
Shifting the position of the apostrophe would have conveyed the desired message clearly. The apostrophe is a punctuation mark that drives out ambiguity. It allows the reader to tell immediately if a word or name is a singular possessive (“Baker’s View”), a plural possessive (“Bakers’ View”) or a plural noun followed by a verb (“Bakers View”).
The apostrophe occupies a small space in print or on signs but performs an invaluable role by its presence, position or absence. There is no more versatile, precise and economical mark in the language. Writers who use it accurately can be sure of being understood. Those who use it heedlessly or dispense with it will, contrary to the aims of Mid Devon’s municipal authorities, provoke disarray where they intend only neatness and comprehension. Mark it well."