Apostrophe Catastrophe! ; the Rogue Apostrophe, so Beloved of Greengrocers, Is Spreading Like Measles On Noticeboards, Signs and Menus. Now There Are Calls to Scrap the Wretched Thing Our Punctuation Policewoman Says It's Time to Fight Back . .

Summary

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THIS all started with a drink. But it very nearly didn't because when I looked at the cocktail list in the otherwise swanky Charlotte Street Hotel in London and discovered that martini's (sic) were [pounds]10.50 and classic's (sic) [pounds]10.50 I momentarily lost my thirst.

The price was bad enough. But did you have to pay extra if you wanted to have your drink correctly punctuated? And would a martini - - mine's made with Plymouth gin, please, very dry, shaken with a twist -- taste as good if it also contained a stray apostrophe? Caught up in a spasm of punctuation-rage I, perhaps slightly aggressively, asked the poor waitress what those two utterly extraneous apostrophes were doing there. She backed away hurriedly and sent over the assistant bar manager.

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Apostrophe Catastrophe! ; the Rogue Apostrophe, so Beloved of Greengrocers, Is Spreading Like Measles On Noticeboards, Signs and Menus. Now There Are Calls to Scrap the Wretched Thing Our Punctuation Policewoman Says It's Time to Fight Back . .

Mariusz Szymecki may have been Polish but his English was fluent. Or almost fluent. 'Both spellings -- martini's and martinis -- are correct,' he said firmly. 'I know this is right because, when I heard what you wanted to know, I checked it on Google.' On Google? Who in the name of a thousand question marks would rely on Google to be an authority on anything, least of all a grammatical matter? The internet is awash with misspellings and punctuation solecisms. Nor is it much better out there in the real world.

And the po...

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