by Alan Watkins
In her column in Monday’s Medway Messenger, my colleague Nikki White lamented the fact that many people neither know nor care when an apostrophe is needed.
I share her angst over its demise. Dropping an apostrophe is a modern phenomenon.
I can already hear the illiterati insisting: “It don’ mean nuffin’, anyways!”
Trouble is, the apostrophe does have an important role in communication.
Waterstone’s has taken the step of becoming a pluralate. It wants to be known as Waterstones sans apostrophe.
Apparently, it considers the tick is superfluous to its trading identity and cuts down the amount of customers it gets through its web Windows and (presumably) subsequently passing through its doorways.
If you are entering a web address on a computer, that little apostrophe can be a nuisance. But it has a definite use: It means the shop of Waterstone, but it has now been simplified to become meaningless.
With the apostrophe it means something. Without, it means something different. Waterstones means... nothing. But when has that ever stopped the marketeers promoting Blotto beer, the latest Zemantic car, – or heaven forbid – initialised, lower-cased names like bhs?
Schools have dropped the 3Rs. With it has gone the art of punctuation.
Fewer people are therefore capable of reading because the beauty of punctuation is that it explains the meaning of a word or sentence.
Instead, we have morons unable to read, write or communicate who would pick a fight instead of picking up a good read.
We have an increasing number of new words having to be invented because technology can’t cope or appallingly “simplified” to create awful-looking texts.
Can you imagine Maria singing:
2nite, 2nite,
Wont B lyk any nite
Would a modern-day Hamlet consider suicide with:
2B or not 2B
Thats the quezz, innit?
From a marketing viewpoint, it is easier to promote Jacksons than Jackson’s.
For those few who don’t know whether or not to use an apostrophe, re-read your sentence:
Is something missing – like the “i” in “It’s a long way to Tipperary”?
Or something longer such as in: “Mike’s car is dirty” (which means the car belonging to Mike).
In either case use the apostrophe. If not, don’t!
Meanwhile, if you are a bookseller, surely promoting good prose, bad prose or plain speaking should mean more to you than getting ticked off by a simple apostrophe?
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