I just read some terrible news. Birmingham, England, is banning apostrophes on road signs to avoid confusion. This is a travesty! Lynne Truss, it time for you to take a trip to Brum to protest this terrible decision.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Birmingham Bans Apostrophes
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10 comments:
WHAT!?!? I had to check the date to make sure this wasn't an April Fool's Day joke.
I think that if they are going to ban that, they should just ban all punctuation. Does St. George mean "Saint George" or "Street George" - not that hard to figure out.
While we're at it, let's ban all letters that have a curve in them. Only letters with straight lines will be allowed.
Oh, and the numbers 6 and 9 are too difficult for the road sign workers to figure out, so we'll just get rid of them as well.
Dumb people beget dumb rules.
That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! What is wrong with these people?
I don't know if it is a problem with my browser, but there are no apostrophes in that article, making some of it nonsense. For example, "whether Kings Heath should be Kings Heath, or even Kings Heath". I had to read that very carefully to see if there was any difference between the 3 instances.
Are they just trying to test if people notice missing apostrophes?
"I dont see the point of them", "If you dont have apostrophes", "if the ambulance couldnt find your street". I noticed! And I found it annoying.
Vireya, I saw the same thing. Their comparisons of the old signs to the new signs were rendered pointless. I'm guessing it's a web site problem, but it's particularly ironic.
I figured they were doing it on purpose to be facetious. :0)
I saw apostrophes in the article when I read it, sadly not always in the right place.
"Birmingham has been inventing it's own rules of grammar since the 1950s, with apostrophes being routinely removed when cast iron street signs are given a new coat of paint."
Sad days.
I saw apostrophes in the article when I checked it just now. And the error that Oliver pointed out seems to have been fixed. Thanks for your comments, everyone!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I agree that this decision is horrifying. But I saw 2 heartening points: 1. The Birmingham Post poll indicated 91.9% against the decision 2. There is such a place, with or without an apostrophe, called Acocks Green.
Being female, I wish they'd ban periods.
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