Why the grammer snobs have it all wrong about the apostrophe

I was moved to write this post by a recent kerfuffle concerning the change in signage of a street in Hampshire (England). When the original sign for "St Mary's Terrace" was replaced, the new sign read "St Marys Terrace". The apostrophe had vanished.

A surprising number -- well, it surprised me, at least -- of residents objected to this change, claiming it amounted to 'incorrect grammar'. There seemed to be a feeling that, in a fight between 'grammar' and convenience, grammar should win.

Perhaps it should; but is the grammar really clear-cut? I will argue that it is not, and that what is at work here is simple snobbery.

When I was a schoolboy, nearly fifty years ago, I was taught that there were clear rules on how to use apostrophes in English. Everybody agreed on them, and to misuse them was simply a mark of sloppy writing. I still use apostrophes -- when I remember to -- as directed by Fowler's Modern English Usage. At least this will make my writing consistent, which can't be a bad thing. But, in fact, the idea that there was consensus among grammarians about the usage of apostrophes was untrue even in my schooldays, and it remains untrue today.

There was, and still is, some loose agreement that apostrophes should be used to indicate where letters have been dropped. We write "can't" and "won't" because -- I was taught -- these are contractions of "can not" and "will not". Even here, however, there are contested usages. The part of the ship traditionally spelled "gunwale" rhymes with "tunnel"; I've seen it spelled "gunnel", but rarely "gun'ale". If somebody did write "gun'ale" I would see it as an affectation.

Still, most uses of the apostrophe to indicate contraction are uncontroversial. It's the possessive use of the apostrophe that seems to let loose all the vitriol.

I was taught at school that I should write "John's Book", because this was a contraction of "John, his book". This explanation is almost certainly incorrect, for reasons I could give a lecture on, but won't. Still the convention is kind-of clear: apostrophe-s on the end of a noun indicates possession.

Except when the noun is plural. We usually write "the girls' books" if there are more than one girl, an "the girl's book" when she is singular.

Oh, and we don't use the possessive apostrophe for pronouns. The car lost its wheel, not "it's wheel". Although the rules can be fiddly when you get into the fine details, the situation is still kind-of clear. "apostrophe-s" for a singular possessive; "s-apostrophe" for a plural possessive.

Except... it really isn't. It's only clear in the most straightforward cases. Even a complication as trivial as the noun ending in "s" is enough to generate dissent. Is the book belonging to James "James's book" or "James' book"? Or even, as I have seen, "James's' book"? All these forms are in widespread use, and have been for decades. Does the accountant submit the "business's accounts", or the "business' accounts"? Or even the "businesses accounts"?

Most grammar snobs don't realize that the apostrophe is a relatively recent innovation. Most languages that have similarities to English don't use it. In German, "John's book" is "Johanns Buch" -- no apostrophe in sight. Chaucer did not use apostrophes. Shakespeare rarely used them, and then in ways mostly unfamiliar to modern readers. Shakespeare's contemporaries did not use "its", or even "it's" to indicate "it is": they wrote "'tis" -- sometimes with the apostrophe and sometimes without. Notoriously, Jane Austen would have written "the carriage lost it's wheel", even though this usage of the apostrophe was already going out of fashion in her lifetime.

Even in my schooldays I eventually learned that the usage of the apostrophe -- even among diligent writers -- was contested. When I was at school I was taught to use an apostrophe to separate a plural "s" from an abbreviation: we sighted UFO's, but many people sighted UFOs. Or so they said. We studied the 1900's, but others studied the 1900s. We didn't sell "tomato's", but we did try to make an argument with "no if's or but's". This was an idiomatic use of the pluralizing apostrophe that was ubiquitous in my region. Of course, so was "tomato's" in certain quarters; I know of market traders who today steadfastly maintain this tradition, in spite of the mockery of the snobs.

The idea that there was some golden age of the apostrophe, when everybody knew and used the same rules, is simply a nonsense. It's not just that the English language changes over time: it does, but there has been no consensus about the apostrophe at any time.

This brings us back to St Mary's Terrace, or St Marys Terrace, if you prefer. Punctuation of names in England was never a matter of grammar: it's a matter of convention.

Many place names -- but not all -- that might have had an apostrophe, had they been named when there was such a thing -- continue not to have an apostrophe. Many of the towns in my region have names that sounds like they need apostrophes, but their names go back to antiquity and so lack one. "St Albans", for example, is named after a man called Alban, but it's never had an apostrophe. "St Alban's Head" in Dorset, usually has the apostrophe, but may be named later after a different fellow altogether. Incidentally, our local church is called "All Saints" on its sign board, but "All Saints'" on its website. In London we have "Earl's Court", with apostrophe, and "Barons Court", without. This latter seems to defeat the historical argument: the name Barons Court only dates back to the nineteenth century. There is a "Baronscourt" in Northern Ireland that dates to the eighteenth century, for which the London district might be named, but that's speculative. "Canons Park" (also London) should, perhaps, be "Canons' Park", because it's a park that belonged to some (plural) canons (the ecclesiastic officers, not the armaments). But the name is never written with an apostrophe. "Canon's Marsh", in the Bristol area, always is.

The list of inconsistencies just goes on an on. There simply isn't a grammatical way to known how to punctuate a name, even if we can determine whether the name implies possession or not. A "letters page" is not a page belonging to letters, but a page containing letters. "Letter's page" would look odd. Is a "Bishop's Stortford" (usually written with the apostrophe) a stortford belonging to a bishop, or a stortford containing bishops? What, exactly, is a 'stortford' anyway? It's a ford over the river Stort, obviously. Did bishops own it? Or just congregate there?

To make things worse, many town names have apostrophes in some sources, and not others, even when we just consider official documentation and signage. King's Cross, in London, was generally signposted "Kings Cross" until the 1950s. Now both forms of the name are in widespread use by the regional authorities, although the apostrophe-bearing form seems more in favour at present.

Using apostrophes in place names is potentially misleading, particularly in a time when most of our postal services are coordinated by computer. People are generally better at recognizing that 'St Marys' is the same place as 'St Mary's' than computers are. The Ordnance Survey (the mapping organization) has argued against using apostrophes in names, because the apostrophes end up on maps, where they get confused with topographical features. At the very least, apostrophes takes up space on signs.

Still, if residents of apostrophised places want to keep their apostrophes, in spite of the advantages of discarding them, I guess they ought to be allowed to. But to claim that removing the apostrophe is an affront to grammar is an argument that lacks authority. It might make some folks feel clever, knowing (or believing) that they can use an apostrophe correctly, and that others can not. But people who are willing to delve into the historical mire of the English language realize that there really is as much disagreement as there is agreement here.