Copy Editors, Councilors and Country Singers on The Errant Apostrophe

An apostrophe is what's known as a diacritical mark. For grammarians it has a couple of precise functions; namely, to stand in for what's missing in a contraction and, secondly, to indicate a possessive.

So, for example, instead of writing "does not", we can write '"doesn't" using an apostrophe for the missing letter 'o'. Its other use is with possessives, as in "the teacher's desk", where the desk belongs to the teacher.

For the public at large, however, it seems to be a mysterious sort of floating comma that no one seems quite sure what to do with. Consequently, it appears to have a life of its own, an unpredictable grammatical fly, so to speak, whose behaviour a lot of people find highly irritating.

The most common mistake is to insert an apostrophe with a simple plural where no possession is implied. This is commonly seen in market stalls where the price of fruit and vegetables is displayed, as in "Apple's £1.50 a kg." As greengrocers are the most enthusiastic perpetrators of this solecism, this has come to be known (among the cognoscenti) as the greengrocer's apostrophe.

The well-known journalist Keith Waterhouse, Founder and Life President of the AAAA (Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostrophe), is in favour of the apostrophe but would like to have it thoroughly swatted wherever it appears erroneously. On the other hand, John Richards, another journalist, is more defensive. Rather than aiming to annihilate its aberrations, his Apostrophe Protection Society aims at preserving its correct usage.

Meanwhile, the Birmingham City Council believes it has solved the problem altogether. It has adopted a zero tolerance policy and has banned the apostrophe entirely. Henceforth, no Birmingham road sign will display an apostrophe. The signs for the city's St Paul's Square, which once looked formal and precise, are now to read as St Pauls Square, in keeping with our more casual and undiscerning expectations.

Happily, however, all is not lost. Across the Atlantic in Nashville, Tennessee, a songwriter /musician team, Bob Beckley and Ronnie Lee Hurst, have come up with a great little number called Apostrophe Apostasy - demonstrating that country and western folk not only have definite standards but also a superior vocabulary. (Apostasy: a total desertion of or departure from one's religion, principles, party, cause, etc.).

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