A council has provoked the wrath of residents and linguists alike after announcing it would ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems.
North Yorkshire council is ditching the punctuation point after careful consideration, saying it can affect geographical databases.
The council said all new street signs would be produced without one, regardless of whether they were used in the past.
Some residents expressed reservations about removing the apostrophes, and said it risked “everything going downhill”. They urged the authority to retain them.
Sam, a postal worker in Harrogate, a spa town in North Yorkshire, told the BBC that signs missing an apostrophe – such as the nearby St Mary’s Walk sign that had been erected in the town without it – infuriated her.