North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs:
"I think we should be using apostrophes.
"If you start losing things like that then everything goes downhill doesn't it?"
Love it! Those nebulous and un-pin-down-able things will go downhill without apostrophes. Runaway Ses! 😆
@Miraz Ugh, as someone who works in software, I always cringe when I see society adapting to the limitations of the software they use. It shouldn’t be this way: the software should be fixed instead.
@lmika @braindump reporting the same thing 🔗 yesterday
// @miraz
I have a feeling it is because people don’t know how apostrophes work to begin with - hence the excellent mapmen video that points all of that out.
@JohnPhilpin “don’t know how apostrophes work” — that’s half the problem. 😀 The other half is that in spoken English apostrophes don’t even exist, yet we cope.
@lmika Good perspective, and I agree. I also think written English could usefully lose its apostrophes. After all, they don’t exist in spoken English.
in spoken English apostrophes don’t even exist, yet we cope.
True, but neither do capital letters, periods/full stops, paragraphs etc.
@JohnPhilpin Some written punctuation fulfils a purpose, such as a full stop showing where a speaker may pause, or other marks that assist with understanding how the voice may change in some way — we may use inflection to indicate that a list comes next, for example.
@Miraz “The other half is that in spoken English apostrophes don’t even exist, yet we cope.” Well, unless you’re a fan of Victor Borge!