On the streets of Birmingham, the queen's English is now the queens English.
England's second-largest city has decided to drop apostrophes from all its street signs, saying they're confusing and old-fashioned.
But some purists are downright possessive about the punctuation mark.
It seems that Birmingham officials have been taking a hammer to grammar for years, quietly dropping apostrophes from street signs since the 1950s. Through the decades, residents have frequently launched spirited campaigns to restore the missing punctuation to signs denoting such places as "St. Pauls Square" or "Acocks Green."
This week, the council made it official, saying it was banning the punctuation mark from signs in a bid to end the dispute once and for all.
I don't know what is more absurd: the city government actually discussing this in meetings or the idea of people becoming "confused" by the singular-possessive.
I can't wait to go to Birmingham now just to ask the tour guides exactly how many Saint Pauls there were and whether or not they were related. It[']ll be a jolly good time.
Cheerio.
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