LONDON – On the streets of Birmingham, the queen’s English is now the queens English. Beginning April 1, 2009, by agreement with the National Council of English Preservation, all apostrophes will be sold to the U.S.A. for 4.5 million pounds. “We don’t need all those little marks, anyway,” said Prince Harry, explaining his first negotiation on the behalf of the Queen. “They just confuse people. Plus, the Americans dont know how to use them either, so I think the British are coming out ahead in this transaction. They really are just old fashioned, and not necessary in todays society. Think how difficult texting would be?”
The value of all British apostrophes was previously reported at 22 million pounds, but devaluation and lack of use weakened its value. A deal was made before the value of the punctuation mark could slide even more. “We were lucky to sell them at the price we got for them before they became worthless.” said treasury Magistrate Wilbur Threadgill.
The devaluation of the apostrophe has been blamed on government officials, and not the general population. It seems that Birmingham City Council officials have been taking a hammer to grammar for years, quietly dropping apostrophes from street signs since the 1950s. This week, the Council made it official, saying it was banning the punctuation mark from all signs in a bid to simplify the job for signmakers. There will be no more debates on the proper spelling of “St. Pauls Square” or “Acocks Green.”
Councilor Martin Chester, who heads the citys transport scrutiny committee, said he decided to act after yet another interminable debate into whether “Kings Heath,” a Birmingham suburb, should be rewritten with an apostrophe. “I had to make a final decision on this,” he said Friday. “We keep debating apostrophes in meetings and we have other things to do. If we just sell them to the U.S.A., we wont have to bother with them anymore. The yanks use too many apostrophes as it is, and I suspect they wont notice a few more.”
Public campaigns to restore the apostrophe will find rough going in England. Agreements have been made and road signs are already in place. Alternate signs put in place by apostrophe activists will be removed and the perpetrators fined.
Chester gives additional reasons for abandoning the apostrophe: he hopes to stop public campaigns to restore the apostrophe that would tell passers-by that “Kings Heath” was once owned by the monarchy. “Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed,” he said. “More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I dont want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it.”
Most teachers in England deny apostrophes enrich the English language. “They are just little black marks that play a minor role in the English language,” said Marie Clair of the Plain English Society, which campaigns for the use of simple English. “Its always too much effort to understand them, instead of ignoring them. Children become discouraged when they have to learn apostrophe rules. Were looking into getting rid of the comma next.”
Mullaney claimed apostrophes confuse GPS units, including those used by emergency services. John Holmes, a spokeswoman for satellite navigation equipment manufacturer TimTim, said most users of their systems navigate through Britain’s sometime confusing streets by entering a postal code rather than a street address. Apostrophes are not necessary for navigation.
The national body responsible for regulating place names in Britain is known as the Ordinance Survey, which is also the main mapping agency. Ordnance Survey, which provides data for emergency services, provides its information to local governments and each one is required to conform to its standards.
“All councils have been instructed to drop all apostrophes in local signage and have 2 years to update their signs,” said Ordinance Survey spokesman Steve Smith. “Ordinance survey data will be updated during the year to comply with the apostrophe ban. Its a simple task: we just delete the apostrophe from the system, and all instances of it are instantly changed. This is a lot easier than Y2K. There will be no confusion.”
Experts wonder what the U.S.A. will do if it determines that it owns too many apostrophes. Will they use more? Will they stockpile them in a Strategic Apostrophe Reserve? Or will they just be rehabilitated and sold to Canada?
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