Birmingham Citys street signs dont like apostrophes.

England's second largest city has decided to do away with the apostrophe on street signs. To us boring Americans, this means nothing. We're the land of Main Street. ((Yawn.)) But in Birmingham, England, they get sassy with their street names. King's Heath. Wheeler's Lane. King's Norton. Acock's Green. The Brits love themselves the possessive street names.

They just don't love using the possessive apostrophe.

According to Martin Mullaney of the city's transportation scrutiny committee (hooray, bureaucracy!), there's no sense in having the possessive apostrophe in all these street signs because, you know, the king doesn't own that heath any more. He doesn't own that norton either. Pssh, there hasn't been a king in 50 years. And the Acock family long ago sold that green. Wheeler? That lane died when he died. So, by jove, it's time to get the whiteout ready and blot out those apostrophes on those street signs! Screw proper English! They are the English after all. They created the language. What's a few centuries of grammatical rules to stop you?

Martin Mullaney is a true politician though. That means when the masses speak, he's sure not to listen. According to Mullaney, "We are constantly getting residents asking for apostrophes to be put back in and as a council we have to make a decision one way or another."

Now, I'm no genius. Help me out here, Martin. No one is asking you to take out the apostrophe, but--according to you--countless residents are asking you to include it? So...you eliminated it? You must be a real sweetheart, Marty. I bet when you're at a pub the smooth moves just ooze out of you when you see a single lady. You offer to buy her a drink. And when she tells you she'll have a glass of wine, you tell her no, she'll have a glass of water.

Now, Marty isn't entirely stodgy. He has his very own blog here on Blogspot. (Maybe we could become a sister blog? We're English majors...he's English and hates the English language...it can be like the Odd Couple, except for shut-ins.) You can find it...here. It's full of such scintillating topics as "planning applications" and "properties being compulsory purchased." But a little searching reveals Marty has a massive, in-depth blog post (here) about the apostrophe issue, explaining that, by golly, the apostrophe started vanishing with the use of cheap-o cast aluminum signs in 1945! The economy weakened post World War 2. Cheap-o signs were a necessity. Jolly good!

Well, that settles it. Whenever the economy dictates it, we should be able to loosen grammatical rules. The economy stinks now, so let's go all ee cummings with our daily grammar rules. Personally, I've always found the semi-colon to have a bit of an identity crisis. Are you a colon or not? What is it? Let's eliminate it. And the comma? Please, none of us know how to properly use it. While we're at it, literacy is totally overrated. I can just drive around and use shapes and colors to tell me what a street sign means. And if I happen to be color blind, well, cut me some slack. Marty will back me up.