Apostrophe loses a champion

A sad piece of news that might have been missed over the festive season — after nearly two decades of fighting the misplaced apostrophe, John Richards has decided to admit defeat.

The former UK copy editor founded the Apostrophe Protection Society in 2001 outraged by the increasing use of slogans such as ‘Diamond’s are forever’ or ‘Best price for fresh vegetable’s’.

Back then he received support from all over the world, but in more recent times has faced growing indifference with some of the communications taking on an aggressive and negative tone.

Comments like “get a life” and “as long as it gets the message across what does it matter?” have become all too frequent. He even featured on a calendar listing ‘the most boring people in Britain’.

He did have some wins, including persuading a local council to reverse a decision to ban the apostrophe from its street signs after it claimed Global Positioning Devices could not cope with the punctuation.

It had no evidence to back its bizarre claim, which Richards described as “appalling”. 

However, for the most part he has been ignored by officialdom which often claimed it had more pressing matters to attend to than a misplaced or missing apostrophe here and there in its official correspondence or signage.

Some so-called experts in the language have even claimed that apostrophes could be dispensed with altogether without causing any confusion. Richards disagrees.

“The apostrophe is a vital piece of punctuation and grammar. To do without it would be confusing as well as inelegant,” he says.

At 96, with no-one interested in continuing the battle, he admits that “the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won”.

He plans to keep the society’s website up as a now mute reproof of an age where correct grammar and punctuation — and indeed literacy itself — is increasingly sidelined and even sneered at.