Thread: St Johns Wood or St John's Wood?
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Old June 28th 06, 08:06 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london,misc.transport.urban-transit
Charles Ellson Charles Ellson is offline
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Default St Johns Wood or St John's Wood?
On 28 Jun 2006 11:42:00 -0700, wrote:


Ned Carlson wrote:

What I'm wondering, is HTF did apostrophes get into the
English language, anyway? None of its ancestor/contributing
languages (Anglo-Saxon, Norse, French, Celtic) use or
used apostrophes, did they?

Didn't the British government go on a campaign a few years
ago to eliminate unnecessary punctuation in bureaucratic
communications, aside from commas and full stops (what us
Americans call a period)?


There was no such campaign to my knowledge. But, I have been a
resident of these United States for most of the past twenty years. I
believe it is the UK practice not to use commas in legal documents.

Probably not so much avoiding commas in particular as more generally
avoiding abbreviations which in some cases could have serious
consequences due to uncertain meaning.
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