MEL’SWORLD
8 APRIL2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE
Loveslabours lost
SOMANYTREASUREDthings
are worth preserving from
extinction, and in my time Ihave
fought to preserve as many of
those things as Icould: the
Northern whiterhino,the Unami
language,the Okjökull glacier, the
Xerxes blue butterfly,socialism,
Sophia Loren, smoking in pubs
and the apostrophe.You name a
battle forsomething that was
worth preserving, and Ican
assure you Ihelped to lose it.
My most recent and tragic
lost battle is the preservation of
the apostrophe.The glorious
Apostrophe Preservation Society
was dissolved afew weeks ago,
due to the fact that its founder
is now96years old and can’t be
arsed to carry on.
Mind you, the general public
never gave amonkey’s anyway.
Sorry,the generalpublic never
gave amonkeys anyway.
Unlike my other lost battles,
the loss of the apostrophe can
be blamed entirely on modern
technology,thatgreedy,stealthy
and relentless adversary of the
language.Tobespecific, the
apostrophe was killed by one
aspect of technology that has
become the most commonly used
on the planet: the text message.
Yesfolks, the killing of the
apostrophe came about because
the extra clicks required to
generateitinatext proved too
much of aburden to cope with.
Some people saythat the
assassination of the apostrophe
was to do with poor education
and class war,but that was never
the case.Itstarted on the high
street, when Boots the chemist
simplified its logo,and then
Harrods, Selfridges and Lloyds
also abandoned their wee dark
dangling hooks of possessive
punctuation, to be followed in
more moderntimes by thelikes
of Starbucks, Barclays,
Debenhams, Waterstones and
Currys, all of which opted to
streamline their own names and
ditch their apostrophes in pursuit
of public convenience.
CONSERVATION MATTER
By wayofbalance,and as
proofofthe Universal Law of
Conservation, which states that
matter can be neither created
nor destroyed, the totalamount
of punctuation in the universe
must remain constant. Which is
why the disappearance of the
apostrophe is directly related to
the increased spawning of other
symbolic characters.
The #hash symbol first
appeared on the standard
keyboards of 19th-century
typewriters, and was used to
designatethe start of anumber.
In the distant days when Iused
mechanical typewriters, I
regularly ignored the #key,but
then it migrated to teleprinter
codes and the touch-tone
telephones of the 1960s, and I
came to accept it as anecessary
aspect of moderncommunication.
Now Idothe same as everyone
else,and use it to help categorise
brainless Tweets.
Then there is the @symbol,
which also featured on my early
mechanical typewriter keys, as an
abbreviation of the financial term
‘at the rateof’.For example,I
used it when Ineeded to type a
useful phrase such as “12 packets
of three @3/9p each”.
And did you spot that little /
symbol in there? Back then the
forward slash was used as a
divider to separateshillings and
pence in our ancient coinage.
Then it lost all sense of direction
after decimal currency was
introduced, only to become
enslaved to serve the World
Wide Web, as in http://www.
Even the humble full stop
became avital part of online
email addresses and URLs. But
sad to sayits flighty cousin the
apostrophehadnosuchrole.The
morethehash,theat,theslash
andthefullstopwereembraced,
themoretheapostrophewas
ignored.Itbecamedisheartened,
thendisorientated,then
confused. It began to wander
the world in search of auseful
function, but the writing was
already on the wall.
BATTLE STATION’S
When Ibecame afoot soldier of
the Apostrophe Preservation
Society,Iwasobliged to arm
myself with indelible writing tools
andgointobattle to correct the
grammatical crimesthat assaulted
my sense and sensibility.
Iwould salvagethe potato’s
of the greengrocer,and Iwould
carefully re-educateposters
advertising 1980’s nights on
Saturday’s. Iwould find new
homes formyrescued
apostrophes by infiltrating them
into shop door signs declaring
“were open”and “your welcome”.
Ijoined the campaigns to
have the apostrophes removed
from street signs in Hartlepool
that read “Parking Bay’s
Suspended”,and then I
campaigned to have the
apostrophes reinstated on the
street signs in Edinburgh that
mistakenly believed Princes
Street was aplural.
But all the while Ibecame
more and more neglectful in my
own apostrophe use fortext
messages. Every time Iomitted
one,Iignored the fact that Iwas
contributing to the crash in the
apostrophe birth rate, until the
tipping point was reached and it
was far, fartoo late.
And now it’s all over.The
battle has been lost. Ihavejust
seen the grey, hunched figure of
Sir David Attenborough hand in
hand with the glowing pixie who
is Greta Thunberg, sorrowful but
resigned as theyleave the offices
ofComputer Shopper,after
declaring the apostrophe extinct.
Henceforth, dear reader,thispage
is to be known as Mels World.
MELCROUCHER
Techpioneerandall-roundgoodegg
[email protected]
The loss of the apostrophe can be blamed
entirely on modern technology
DespiteMelCroucher’sbestefforts,themuch-abusedapostropheisonthevergeof
extinction,avictimofignoranceandtrendyhashtags,slashesand@symbols
