News & Opinion - Fri 13th Jan 2012
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Fri 13th Jan 12 Catastrophe for the apostrophe?
It is the ultimate irony that Waterstone's, a chain of bookshops, is dropping the apostrophe in their name. Facing a barrage of criticism for ditching the apostrophe managing director of Waterstone's, James Daunt, expained this decision: “Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling."
I am sure that in this digital age you could make the same argument for almost every other grammatical rule on which our language is based, but I see it as backward step. Of course, you can't have apostrophes in web addresses or e-mail but that's no reason to change the rules to suit.
What they should have done, if they really wanted to simplofy things, was remove the apostrophe and the 's', so that you would simply have Waterstone. Sainsbury's could easiliy become Sainsbury in just the same way we have John Lewis — it's never been John Lewis's (unless you're writing about something John Lewis owns).
Whichever way you look at this story it is a PR gaffe that could so easily have been avoided.