Birmingham drops the possessive apostrophe

Apostrophe? What apostrophe?

This is such a non-event. I mean, I was born in Kings Heath, grew up in Kings Heath and after time away down south (learning about civilisation and taming the elemental forces of fire) I again live in Kings Heath and it has never, ever had an apostrophe.

In fact, it's such a non-event that it has prompted me to finally register for an El Reg account.

BCC strike back...

It's nice to see my council tax money being spent so wisely. Hell, the local schools don't need the money, 'cause none of the kids can be bothered turning up...

O....M....G....

You did it! You finally, really did it! YOU PEDANTS!

Sorry 8) but when I read "Apostrophe Protection Society" I thought it was a joke, and googling and finding that such a thing actually exists - well my reaction could only be expressed a la Charlton Heston.

The Dumbing Down of England

Normally this comment ends with "America", but it appears you across the pond have contracted the same disease.

Paris because she just can't be dumbed down ... any further.

I'm just happy to see Acocks Green Represented

I live in Acocks Green. I don't think the apostrophe really matters that much. After all its not the King's Heath anymore or the Acock's Green.

- Aaron

You say that...

> Mullaney rested his case with: “It would be tragic if the ambulance couldn’t find your street if you forgot to use the possessive apostrophe.”

Could I suggest that this point is debatable? It would be the best scheme I've yet heard for encouraging good grammar.

Besides, if this took off everywhere it would be harder to spot tourists - for example those who, in Cambridge, don't know the distinction between Queen's Road and Queens' College. Think of all the students who would be run over.

Speaking as someone who followed a florist's van this morning with the slogan "Wer'e bloomin' good" on the back of it, I despair for humanity. Thank goodness for programming languages, which usually insist on correct punctuation.

(Not a member of the APS, but I have been known to correct the label on the front of the Cleaners' Sign-In Book.)

REG^H^H^HThe English language.

@ It's not April 1, but...

It's true. http://www.apostrophe.org.uk.

I sent them the "Dear Passenger's" one (examples 4).

Pari's because.........

Emergency services databases (WM Police in particular)

I have, on a number of occasions over a few years, needed to report incidents to WM police via their "help desk" in K'i'n'gs' H'e'a't'h' (not via 999, via their 0845 number).

THEY DON'T DO POSTCODES. This despite having spent tens of millions over the same few years upgrading their "integrated" command, communications, and control system(s).

On the first occasion I found this out I politely and respectfully expressed my surprise and disappointment [no irony intended] and the eejit on the phone went into a ten minute rant, thus preventing me from making my report in a timely manner, and preventing others from getting through in a timely manner. Maybe he'd had a particularly bad day. He was very lucky to avoid a formal complaint from me.

Since then I ask if postcodes work and if the answer is still no I swiftly move on to speeling out the address and hoping it doesn't get lost in transcription.

It's not that long since my other half phoned the Ambulance service in West Berks, in a case which was a life or death emergency, from a ridiculously unspellable address, and they too couldn't cope with postcode->address translation. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late. No way of knowing for sure whether the extra seconds mattered, but...

If these folks really truly can't afford a corporate postcode->address licence for the CCC system [1], why can't they get all the front line people a cheap 2nd-hand (presumably nicked) TomTom from Cash Converters or wherever, a gadget whose postcode->address function would cover 99.8% of postcodes practically for free?

Maybe they both bought a US import CCC system and didn't notice it doesn't do postcodes till you pay the vendor/integrator extra $M or more?

@Paul Murphy

It would be "King's Heath" if the Heath is owned by just one King.

It would be "Kings' Heath" if it is owned by more than one King.

Additionally, "Kings' Heath" could refer to a singular owner if, for example, the person in question is named "Kings".

The contraction of "King is" is, as you say, always "King's". The existential contraction for more than one King would be "Kings're".

Mine's the one with the leaves and pistol in the pocket.

Hospital case

So let me get this straight. They're worried that when I phone for an ambulance the database will get confused between King's Avenue and Kings Avenue? Rather than that when I say "King's Avenue" over the phone to the 19-year-old at the other end that they wouldn't likely transcribe it as Kingz Avaneu? And then that the Birmingem Ambluance's Cervix won't be able to figure out where that is?

Paris, because she's the kind of girl who doesn't get possessive about things like aprostroffs. Bless.

Re: oh God must I

<Hurt tone>

I did specifically say it was from the body text and not the subhead, as did the earlier poster on the same subject and that the reason that I quibbled was due to its mix of quotation mark styles and not that it was one or the other.

</Hurt tone>

....and yes, you must. What did you expect, running an article like this? Red rags and bulls, you know?

BTW, I appear to have found your coat, here you are....

St. Marys Rd?

Just saw that in an AP article on this topic - looks completely ridiculous. Makes me want to go and change it to St. Maries :\ Ya know, I'm usually not one for nitpicking points of grammar, but in choosing between including a tiny little mark (that in its own little way represents hundreds of years of history) in the name of correctness and making things (allegedly) more correct but looking ridiculous, aesthetics is going to win out with me.

Alternately, rename everything to a symbol, and just refer to "the area formerly known as Kings Heath"

I hate to point this out...

...but when you phone the emergency services and bark down the line

"Quick, get yourselves over to King's Heath ASAP..."

I don't think you actually make a point of pronouncing it "King-apostrophe-s Heath (you know, the possessive singular)" do you?

So given that the voice input part of the circuit is completely deaf to apostrophes, how on earth can the provision of emergency services have any bearing on the matter one way or the other?

It's just FUD. Don't be possessed by it!

ApostropheAbuse.com etc

"Froemps" said:

"...in Germany. They are everywhere, breeding like rabbits. Or rabbit’s. Please take them back."

Yes, as wyth so much of are langauge, apostrophe's our overuse'd misuse'd an abused. See th'e following ApostropheAbuse.com websight for detale's. Yes, its a *reel* axtual webbsight.

http://www.apostropheabuse.com/

- Paris cause i think here name showd have a apostrophe two: Pari's. Or Paris'. There ;)

(Uv korse i axtually dew no how two right korectlee.)

Typical council a*se covering

Reading the full Times story, basically the council have been messing up recently and accidentally installing signs without the apostrophes. A few pedants have complained, and the council have figured out it will cost a lot to fix (with the side effect of making them look like idiots). So they have decided to justify a policy of no longer using apostrophes, based on totally nonsensical arguments. Saves them fixing the problem.

It is hilarious to see the councillor (hopefully an intelligent and educated man) pretending that he thinks the correct grammatical form of a phrase depends on whether it is actually true. FFS, should all fictional works omit apostrophes because the characters don't really exist?

The emergency services database argument has also been debunked here.

The council are covering their own mistakes.

The reason this is important is because councils do exactly the same when they screw up over something which actually matters. Like schools. Police, protecting vulnerable children, town planning etc etc.

The real issue is not the apostrophe, it's with the software

Working in emergency services in the US I've seen this at our agency. The database in question is attached to a map and contains a list of street names for the map. As PCs in the emergency services vehicles become more common, these all have a copy of this map installed. As our agency has used a couple of the more common programs for maintaining the map, I've seen that they do not handle punctuation very well, especially apostrophes and hyphens. Usually everything after apostrophes gets cut off, to re-use an earlier example, King's Road would be cut off to show only King. I suspect the people of Alabama are running into a similar issue, eliminating the apostrophes is a work around to this.

re: King's Heath

If it doesn't belong to the king, surely it should just be called "Heath."

You save not only the paint for the apostrophe, but also a whole five extra letters, plus a space!

As a place name, the point that it belonged to the king at some point should be enough. After all, we have lots of "forest road" names without a forest being in sight. Given that we don't have a king, I suspect people know the place doesn't belong to him.

I have to agree, the ambulance story is one of the lamest I've ever heard. Strip trailing esses in the database if you can't code escapes. It s easier than changing place names!

It looks like change for change's sake. I suggest the good councilmen stick to improving rubbish collection and stop annoying large parts of the electorate, regardless of the merit of such a plan. More focus and less self-publicity please...

Paris, the similarities are more than skin deep...

What?

What the fuck?! As a Brummie, why was I not consulted? I'd tell them where they could shove each and every apostrophe they needlessly removed, the twunts.

Heres' my title and word's

Ive' alway's wondered about the'se apostrophe thing's.

It's nice to know...

...that no subject is too small for Pavlov's Frothing Dogs.

An incorrect apostrophe is like a snooker cue in my eye....

Why not rename the offending streets and areas if the 'pos is inconvenient? Go ahead, wipe away centuries of history. No-one cares, apparently. Let's pander to the hard of thinking.

And could someone have a word with "Morrisons" - a shop which, if their signage is to be believed, sells only people or things called Morrison. It's THE place to go for your Jim and Van records. And is it really true that Van Morrison was born in a gym, and Jim Morrison was born in a van?

Poor coding standards

“It would be tragic if the ambulance couldn’t find your street if you forgot to use the possessive apostrophe.”

A few years ago I did a pass-the-time project... a tube route planner. It was slow, didn't have the best logic and was written in TCL, but it WAS able to handle punctuation in the station names.

If emergency services software writers can't implement the following code, then we're all in a lot of trouble:

if (strip_punctuation(input_street) == strip_punctuation(database_street)) then matched=true; display_results();

-- RIchard