Eats, Shoots & Leaves (5 page)

Do people other than professional writers care, though? Well, yes, and I have proof in heaps. As I was preparing for this book, I wrote an article for
The Daily Telegraph
, hoping to elicit a few punctuation horror stories, and it was like detonating a dam. Hundreds of emails and letters arrived, all of them testifying to the astonishing power of recall
we sticklers have when things have annoyed us (“It was in 1987, I’ll never forget, and it said “CREAM TEA’S”); and also to the justifiable despair of the well educated in a dismally illiterate world. Reading the letters, I was alternately thrilled that so many people had bothered to write and sunk low by such overwhelming evidence of Britain’s stupidity and indifference. The vast majority of letters concerned misplaced apostrophes, of course, in
potato’s
and
lemon’s
. But it was interesting, once I started to analyse and sort the examples, to discover that the greengrocer’s apostrophe formed just one depressing category of the overall, total, mind-bogglingly depressing misuse of the apostrophe. Virtually every proper application of this humble mark utterly stumps the people who write to us officially, who paint signs, or who sell us fruit and veg. The following is just a tiny selection of the examples I received:

Singular possessive instead of simple plural (the “greengrocer’s apostrophe”):

Singular possessive instead of plural possessive:

Plural possessive instead of singular possessive:

No possessive where possessive is required:

Dangling expectations caused by incorrect pluralisation:

and best of all:

Unintentional sense from unmarked possessive:

Someone knows an apostrophe is required . . . but where, oh where?

Apostrophes put in place names/proper names:

It’s or Its’ instead of Its:

Hundreds of examples, many from respectable National Trust properties and big corporations, but notably:

Plain illiteracy:

Commas instead of apostrophes:

Signs that have given up trying:

This is a mere sample of the total I received. I heard from people whose work colleagues used commas instead of apostrophes; from someone rather thoughtfully recommending a restaurant called l’Apostrophe in Reims (address on request); and from a Somerset man who had cringed regularly at a sign on a market garden until he discovered that its proprietor’s name was – you couldn’t make it up – R. Carrott. This explained why the sign said “Carrott’s” at the top, you see, but then listed other vegetables and fruits spelled and punctuated perfectly correctly.

Up to now, we have looked at the right and wrong uses of the apostrophe, and I have felt on pretty safe ground. All this is about to change, however, because there are areas of apostrophe use that are not so simple, and we must now follow the apostrophe as it flits innocently into murky tunnels of
style, usage and (oh no!) acceptable exception. Take the possessive of proper names ending in “s” – such as my own. Is this properly “Lynne Truss’ book” or “Lynne Truss’s book”? One correspondent (whose name I have changed) wrote with a tone of impatience: “From an early age I knew that if I wanted to write Philippa Jones’ book I did NOT WRITE Philippa Jones’s book with a second ‘s’. I see this error often even on a school minibus: St James’s School. Perhaps the rules have changed or the teachers just do not know nowadays.”

Sadly, this correspondent has been caught in the embarrassing position of barking up two wrong trees at the same time; but only because tastes have changed in the matter. Current guides to punctuation (including that ultimate authority,
Fowler’s Modern English Usage
) state that with modern names ending in “s” (including biblical names, and any foreign name with an unpronounced final “s”), the “s”
is
required after the apostrophe:

Keats’s poems

Philippa Jones’s book

St Jame’s Square

Alexander Dumas’s
The Three Musketeers

With names from the ancient world, it is not:

Archimedes’ screw

Achilles’ heel

If the name ends in an “iz” sound, an exception is made:

Bridges’ score

Moses’ tablets

And an exception is always made for Jesus:

Jesus’ disciples

However, these are matters of style and preference that are definitely not set in stone, and it’s a good idea not to get fixated about them. Bill Walsh’s charmingly titled book
Lapsing into a Comma
(Walsh is a copy desk chief at
The Washington Post
) explains that while many American newspapers prefer
“Connors’ forehand”, his own preference is for “Connors’s forehand” – “and I’m happy to be working for a newspaper that feels the same way I do”. Consulting a dozen or so recently published punctuation guides, I can report that they contain minor disagreements on virtually all aspects of the above and that their only genuine consistency is in using Keats’s poems as the prime example. Strange, but true. They just can’t leave Keats alone. “It is
Keats’ poems
(NOT
Keats’s
),” they thunder. Or alternatively: “It is
Keats’s poems
(NOT
Keats’
).” Well, poor old Keats, you can’t help thinking. No wonder he developed that cough.

Having said that there are no absolute rights and wrongs in this matter, however, when many people wrote to ask why St Thomas’ Hospital in London has no “s” after the apostrophe, I did feel that the answer must echo Dr Johnson’s when asked to explain his erroneous definition of a pastern: “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.” Of course it should be St Thomas’s Hospital.
Of course it should
. The trouble is that institutions, towns, colleges, families, companies and brands have authority over their own spelling and punctuation (which
is often historic), and there is absolutely nothing we can do except raise an eyebrow and make a mental note. Virtually the first things a British newspaper sub-editor learns are that Lloyds TSB (the bank) has no apostrophe, unlike Lloyd’s of London (insurance); Earls Court, Gerrards Cross and St Andrews have no apostrophe (although Earl’s Court tube station seems to have acquired one); HarperCollins has no space; Bowes Lyon has no hyphen; and you have to give initial capitals to the words Biro and Hoover otherwise you automatically get tedious letters from solicitors, reminding you that these are brand names. The satirical magazine
Private Eye
once printed one of the letters from Biro’s representatives, incidentally, under the memorable heading, “What a pathetic way to make a living”.

St Thomas’ Hospital is thus the self-styled name of the hospital and that’s that. The stadium of Newcastle United FC is, similarly, St James’ Park. In the end, neither example is worth getting worked up about – in fact, on the contrary, once you have taken a few deep breaths, you may find it within you not only to tolerate these exceptions but
positively to treasure them and even love them. Personally, I now lose all power of speech if I see University College London ignorantly awarded a comma where none belongs, or E. M. Forster’s title
Howards End
made to look ordinary by some itchy-fingered proofreader. Meanwhile,
The Times Guide to English Style and Usage
(1999) sensibly advises its readers not to pin their mental well-being on such matters, putting it beautifully: “Beware of organisations that have apostrophe variations as their house style, eg, St Thomas’ Hospital, where we must respect their whim.”

It is time to confess that I have for many years struggled with one of the lesser rules of the apostrophe. I refer to the “double possessive”, which is evidently a perfectly respectable grammatical construction, but simply jars with me, and perhaps always will. We see it all the time in newspapers:

“Elton John, a friend of the footballer’s, said last night . . . ”

“Elton John, a friend of the couple’s, said last night . . . ”

“Elton John, a friend of the Beckhams’, said last night . . . ”

Well, pass me the oxygen, Elton, and for heaven’s sake, stop banging on about your glitzy mates for a minute while I think.
A friend of the footballer’s
? Why isn’t it, “a friend of the footballer”? Doesn’t the construction “of the” do away with the need for another possessive? I mean to say, why do those sweet little Beckhams need to possess Elton John twice? Or is that a silly question?

But fight the mounting panic and turn to Robert Burchfield’s third edition of
Fowler’s Modern English Usage
(1998), and what do I find? The double possessive is calmly explained, and I start to peel away the problem. Do I have any objection to the construction “a friend of mine” or “a friend of yours”? Well, no. I would never say “a friend of me” or “a friend of you”. And yes, you
would
say “a cousin of my mother’s”, “a child of hers”. Well, “a friend of the footballer’s” is the same thing! The only time you drop the double possessive is when, instead of being involved with an animate being, you are “a lover of the British Museum”, because obviously
the British Museum does not – and never can – love you back.

We may all be getting a little sick and tired of the apostrophe by now, so I’ll just get a couple more things off my chest.