Council scraps apostrophes on street signs

Apostrophes will be phased out of street signs to avoid computer problems, a council has said.

North Yorkshire Council will scrap the punctuation mark because they negatively affect geographical databases.

The council said all new street signs would now be produced without apostrophes.

However residents of Harrogate have called for the authority to retain them or risk “everything going downhill”.

Sam, a postwoman who chose not to give her second name, said a new St Mary’s Walk sign had been erected without an apostrophe but it had been altered to include one by an unknown punctuation enthusiast.

She told BBC: “I walk past the sign every day and it riles my blood to see inappropriate grammar or punctuation.”

The former teacher who previously taught children grammar, said she thought it was “brilliant” that the punctuation mark had been added.

‘Everything goes downhill’

Anne Keywood, another resident, told BBC the revised sign policy was unnecessary, adding: “I think we should be using apostrophes. If you start losing things like that then everything goes downhill doesn’t it?”

Ruby Wang, who works at a Japanese restaurant in the town, was not opposed to the changes. “To be honest with you, because I’m not from this country it doesn’t matter because it’s the same pronunciation,” she said.

North Yorkshire Council said it “along with many others across the country” had opted to “eliminate” the apostrophe from street signs.

A spokesman told the broadcaster: “All punctuation will be considered but avoided where possible because street names and addresses, when stored in databases, must meet the standards set out in BS7666.

“This restricts the use of punctuation marks and special characters (e.g. apostrophes, hyphens and ampersands) to avoid potential problems when searching the databases as these characters have specific meanings in computer systems.”

Last year grammar campaigners won a year-long fight to get an apostrophe reinstated on their street sign after the punctuation mark was left off the new road furniture of St Mary’s Terrace in Twyford, Hampshire.

When it was raised with Winchester city council, villagers were told that the apostrophe had been omitted deliberately as part of a local authority policy to make signs easier to read.

The Apostrophe Protection Society also notified its members that Birmingham City Council had launched a campaign last year to remove them completely from road signs because of repeated errors and misuse.

The chairman of the APS, Bob McCalden told The Telegraph: “People really struggle with it, and these mistakes leap out at me.”

North Yorkshire Council was contacted for comment by The Telegraph.