Apostrophe’s? Its not worth waterstones

My keen Turkish students, who by this stage usually make up the majority in the class, propose a number of answers, which include: “correct grammar,” “not translating in your head,” “appropriate vocabulary” and so on. These are all correct, but one linguist made what some pedants would consider to be a blasphemous claim: “The evidence of fluency is the ability to break the rules.” To which I add, after a pause for gasps of relief: “Correctly!” which elicits sheepish laughter. One of the units in Headway’s Advanced level course book has a tongue-in-cheek look at the most common “rules” and pokes fun at them. Nevertheless, there is one area that many people -- be they students, teachers or native speakers of English -- tend to forget is part of grammar: punctuation.

One of the books I donated to my colleagues’ library at school before I left was the international bestseller “Eats Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss. She describes the book as “the zero tolerance approach to punctuation” and it is, of course, educational, informative, inspiring and humorously infectious. According to a note in Wikipedia, the title of the book is “an amphibology -- a verbal fallacy arising from an ambiguous grammatical construction -- and derived from a joke on bad punctuation.” The story goes:

“A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

“‘Why?’ asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. ‘Well, I’m a panda,’ he says, at the door. ‘Look it up.’

“The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. ‘Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves’.” Not all my students get it. Anyway, while this story deals with the prickly problem of comma placement, it also has a chapter on the equally thorny issue of apostrophes and their use or abuse by, it would seem, most of us.

So it is, then, that a great hoo-ha has arisen in the UK and wider press at the announcement by the only surviving substantial main street bookseller, Waterstone’s, to drop the apostrophe; they now insist on writing it: Waterstones. It was done, said the company’s managing director, James Daunt, on the grounds that “Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling.” Grammarians, lexicographers, teachers of English, writers and readers have all been up in arms about it. And yet, David Marsh, writing in The Guardian (Thursday, Jan. 12) says: “You might think that, as the man behind last year’s first International Apostrophe Day, I’d be joining the outcry about Waterstones’ (note the apostrophe) decision to drop the apostrophe from its previous incarnation, Waterstone’s…” He goes on to state: “But apart from my initial response -- tweeting ‘we can only hope Waterstones knows its s**t’ -- I haven’t joined the uproar. In fact I am happy to confirm that, despite what you may have read in the Telegraph and elsewhere, the world has not come to an end. The fact is that the way retailers choose to punctuate their name is a mess and certain to remain so.” He cites examples such as Tesco (correct as it is not a proper name), Marks & Spencer (Mr. Marks and Mr. Spencer chose this spelling) and he concludes: “As many shopping centres boast a Tesco, a Morrisons, a Sainsbury’s, a Marks & Spencer, a Waterstones and a McDonald’s, it is hardly surprising that many young people, and greengrocers of all ages, find apostrophes so difficult.”

Students of English are aware, however, that we go to “the dentist’s,” “the butcher’s” and the “baker’s” because the absent location nouns, “surgery” and “shop,” respectively, are tacitly understood by all. Shop signs are notorious in the UK and other English-speaking countries for their abuse of apostrophes. Cal Flyn, reporting in The Sunday Telegraph (“Possessive obsessive,” Jan. 15) writes: “Pedants, already exasperated by shop signs around the country, might have hoped that a bookseller courting literate customers would be the last bastion of correct apostrophe use. Not any more.” Up here in Edinburgh you can walk up Arthur’s Seat, but you won’t see an apostrophe while shopping on the city’s main drag, Princes Street. Writing about İstanbul presents its own challenge when alluding to the islands in the Sea of Marmara: Are they the Prince’s Islands, Princes’ Islands or Princes Islands? (The second is correct). All three can be read in newspapers, guidebooks and online websites (Google also reveals “Princess Islands, İstanbul”!).

There is help, though, from the Apostrophe Protection Society, which provides a simple guide on its website to correct usage. The Society’s John Richards told The Sunday Times: “The problem is really down to a mixture of laziness and ignorance. But why must we lower the standards of our language instead of simply training people better to use it?” Quite; and it is our job as teachers, perhaps above all others, to ensure that we are familiar with, and fluent in, the rules that govern the placement, or not, of apostrophes. The same could be said of the comma, as I suggested above, but as Richards added: “I received an email the other day from someone asking me to create the ‘Comma Protection Society.’ But, you know, I just don’t have the time to do both.” Any volunteers?

The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar takes no prisoners: “In modern English the use of the apostrophe to mark ordinary plurals (e.g., potato’s, ice-cream’s) is generally regarded as illiterate and is disparagingly referred to as the ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe.’ … The current rules for possessive apostrophes are:

Add ‘s to a singular word (e.g., the boy’s homework, an hour’s time, Doris’s husband, her boss’s address).

Also add ‘s to plural words that do not end in s (e.g., the men’s action, the people’s will). With plural words ending in s only add an apostrophe at the end (e.g., ladies’ shoes, the Lawsons’ house).” (Or even the Princes’ Islands!)

So that’s all settled then. I hope that it has been understood that we all need to know the rules first. Then, much like “advanced” driving, we can become more “fluent” and break the rules, so to speak. As technological advances are again being offered as (lame) excuses for such grammatical howlers as that being introduced by Waterstones, Tim Waterstone, who founded the company 30 years ago, remains indifferent ; he abandoned his offspring a while back. Me? I say: “Apostrophe’s? Its not worth the Waterstones!” After all, its the Internets fault isnt it?