Apostrophe abuse a real catastrophe (From York Press)

Apostrophe abuse a real catastrophe

9:12am Thursday 25th February 2010 in

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The time has come. Pedants and perfectionists – prepare your pens.

Some of you may recall a piece I wrote last year on the perilous plight of the apostrophe, lamenting its misuse and widespread neglect.

Well folks, things are coming to a head.

I’d normally desist from revisiting old topics, and I would have similarly desisted here, had my previous piece not led to my biggest mailbag since joining The Press five years ago.

It seems I can write anything I want about politics, crime, world affairs or beer and elicit only a few comments.

But step briefly into the realm of punctuation and I invoke an army like no other. Dozens upon dozens of you responded, naming and shaming the miscreants and answering the call to action.

Several of you were irked by signs at Monks Cross shopping centre (itself dubiously bereft of punctuation), which directed traffic towards “the store’s” – the rogue apostrophe left hanging in eternal suspense.

I was inundated with pictures of flawed street signs from around the city. One saw Lord Mayor’s Walk lose its crucial mark, to become Lord Mayors Walk, as if it were not a name but simply a statement of fact – as in: Lord Mayors Walk if they don’t want to take the bus.

Some of you simply wanted to lend your voices to this most worthy of campaigns. Some wanted to know how they could help. One maverick even asked if I would join him on a virtuous vigilante drive, armed with marker pens and ladders. Words can barely express how tempted I was.

Only a few dissenting souls questioned the value of it all, daring to suggest there might be bigger things to worry about. War? Recession? Global warming? Pah. Whatever.

To all and sundry though, I promised to revisit the issue in the course of time. And I have finally been stirred to do so.

For, dear reader, we are just weeks away from one of the most controversial weeks of the year for the ol’ apostrophe. Just weeks away from one of its most treacherous festivals. Weeks away from arguably its most cataclysmic weekend.

In just over two weeks’ time, you see, it will be Mothering Sunday. Or at least it will be, if you go with the official, foolproof, uncontroversial name.

But it’s Mothering Sunday, AKA... Mother’s Day. And that’s where my irritation begins.

For it seems that every single card manufacturer in the country is determined to put the apostrophe before the s – as if the day belongs not to mothers everywhere, but to one particular mum – a mysterious supermum who deserves universal acclaim, taking on the role of a modern-day Virgin Mary.

Why, oh why, oh why, oh why?!

Surely any right-minded son or daughter can see that it should be Mothers’ Day, not Mother’s Day? Surely it’s a day for all mothers? Surely that’s why the companies make so many cards? If the day were meant to celebrate this one mysterious supermum, surely they’d only need to make one big card. No?

No. Instead, for years now, every March, I have had to embark on a one-man mission, ignoring shelf after shelf of invalid greetings, in search of a pretty, non-contentious, grammatically-correct blank card that can be adapted.

Now I know what some of you will say. Firstly, you’ll say that I’m an over-obsessive geek. Then you’ll say that the apostrophe is singular because Mothering Sunday is a day for each individual family to celebrate its own individual mum.

Well, I’ll plead guilty on the first count. But to the second, I say: Nonsense.

If that were the case, why wouldn’t individual families get to choose when their day was?

Why couldn’t I move my mum’s day to the latter half of the year, avoiding the annual clash with a glut of family birthdays, including hers.

Why not? Because the card companies know they’re in the wrong, that’s why.

So there. That’s that.

Now, about that sign I saw in my local shop for “pancake’s day”....