Is it just me or does anyone else visibly shudder when they see an AWOL apostrophe or poor punctuation?

When I heard the president of the UK Spelling Society recently calling for us to adopt phonetic and SMS speech in everyday language, I did an involuntary body-pop of which Michael Jackson would have been proud.

Maybe he’s stirring the pot to get a reaction and generate publicity, maybe he’s just having a laugh, or maybe I’ve gone to sleep and woken up on April 1? Whatever. It worked.

“Let’s stop worrying if people sometimes spell you as u, your and you’re both as ur, and whose and who’s both as whos,” said Professor John Wells. “People should be able to use whichever spelling they prefer.

“Have we really nothing better to do with our lives than fret about the apostrophe?” he asks.

Well of course we do, but that’s not grounds for making poor grammar and incorrect spelling acceptable. I appreciate that language evolves and we must evolve with it, but surely there’s no need to dumb it down that much.

My personal opinion aside, poor spelling, punctuation and grammar reflect badly on a company, brand or individual. It demonstrates a lack of attention to detail, sloppiness, a lack of care…none of which are positive attributes however you dress them up.

I would rather eat at Bob’s Burgers than Bobs Burgers any day of the week. If a company can be so sloppy as to get something as basic as its name wrong, then it doesn’t bode well for other areas of the business.

A colleague of mine was recently asked to sign a community petition on a subject he feels strongly about, but the preamble to the petition was so badly punctuated and hard to read that he lost the will to live mid-way through. Are we all in such a rush that we can’t pause for breath? Punctuate for heaven’s sake! In this case, it could mean the difference between getting those community signatures.

OK, so I know I’m being pedantic, but I’m not alone. The fact that Lynne Truss’ pro-punctuation bible ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ sold more than three million copies worldwide and topped the New York Times’ Bestseller list is testament to that. There are millions of people shuddering (or in extreme cases body-popping) with me.

Professor Wells’ argument is also flawed in that it doesn’t take different accents into consideration. Approximately 341 million people speak English as a native language and a further 267 million speak it as a second language in more than 104 countries. Quite how we’re supposed to adopt a uniform phonetic language is anyone’s guess.

On the bright side, having walked past the same laksa house for the past few weeks and shuddering at the lack of apostrophe in its name, I was heartened this morning to see that somebody had placed a strategic chopstick where the apostrophe ought to be.

Top marks for effort. I know where I’ll be eating lunch today.

- Carolyn Gallagher

September 17th, 2008  |  by Carolyn Gallagher Published in Publicity