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Local authorities in the British region of North Yorkshire have announced that they will ban the use of apostrophe on street signs signs due to digital databases and possible search problems. In English, an apostrophe before an “s” indicates ownership, and just an “s” at the end of a word indicates plurality. Not all residents liked the innovation.
The Council stated that all new road signs will be produced without apostrophes, regardless of previous use. Residents of the resort town of Harrogate in North Yorkshire, who spoke to the BBC, are calling on the authorities to leave the apostrophe. Moreover, someone adds an apostrophe by hand to the new characters.
One disgruntled resident, former teacher Posty Sam, complains about the St Mary's Walk sign: “I walk past this sign every day and it makes my blood boil when I see inappropriate grammar or punctuation.” However, now the sign has been independently changed by an unknown person – an apostrophe has been drawn on it. Posty calls it a “genius” move.
The teacher says that she spent a lot of her life teaching children the basics of grammar and demands that the correct spelling remain on the signs. Several other residents surveyed share a similar opinion.
Ruby Wong, who works at a Japanese restaurant in the city, doesn't mind the changes: “Honestly, since I'm not from that country, it doesn't matter since the pronunciation is the same.”
Dr Ellie Rye, who lectures in English and linguistics at the University of York, says the apostrophe is a relatively new invention in writing:
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“In writing one might say that they can disambiguate things that might be ambiguous, so they distinguish between two St. Mary's walking down the street arm in arm and 'I live in St. Mary's Lane,' but in practice these two statements do not are ambiguous. If I say that I live on St. Mary's Street, [because of the same pronunciation] we expect the name of the street or some kind of address.”
North Yorkshire Council refers to the experience of other regions of the UK. Similar decisions of local authorities, as well as publications about them, have existed for many years.
A Council spokesman added: “All punctuation will be considered but will be avoided where possible because street names and addresses, when stored in databases, must meet the standards set out in BS7666. This limits the use of punctuation and special characters (such as apostrophes, hyphens, and ampersands) to avoid potential problems when searching databases because these characters have specific meanings in computer systems.”
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