Tadpoles

Cambridge ‘irresponsible’ for dropping apostrophes from new road signs

Cambridge City Council has provoked the ire of grammar hounds after it became the latest council to ditch apostrophes from new street signs.

Campaigners are concerned thatthe changes – which were made to avoid confusion in the famous university city –could send the wrong example to schoolchildren.

They are signs of omission or possession.

Some seek them everywhere – pedantic souls.
They pursue their strange obsession
like pond dippers hunting for tadpoles.
They perceive in the misused apostrophe –
a faulty plural or mangled contraction –
a sign of their superiority
not just a grammatical infraction
but a signal that order is breaking down
an ineluctable moral decline
at least in the poorer parts of town.
It doesn’t matter. But I’ll keep mine
in the right places. I know where they go
and where they don’t. Or at least I should do