On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:27:40 -0500, "Stephen Sprunk"
wrote:

In general, all punctuation and diacritical marks are dropped to make signs
and addresses as easy to read/write as possible. Therefore "St. John's"
becomes "St Johns" (notice the two changes). At least where English is the
common language; I assume in languages where accents and such are used more
frequently, signmakers are more tolerant of them

Sorry - I've had technical problems, so am following this up very
late, but have also observed a lot of punctuation on signs.

Removing punctuation certainly isn't the policy on London Underground
signage. In the new Western ticket hall at King's Cross the signs
refer consistently to 'King's Cross' and 'St. Pancras' even though, as
discussed elsewhere in the thread, it would be more usual to write 'St
Pancras' without a full-stop in British English at least.
Incidentally 'St Pancras' is both the form used on most of the main
line station signage and the form that I would normally use in
writing.

As it happens, since this thread started, I drove past a well-known
posh restaurant just outside Oxford, and noted signs to it as 'Le
Manoir au Quat' saisons' *with* the apostrophe on after 'quat'. These
were standard British road signs with the brown background used for
tourist attractions and the like, and again the convention appears to
be to include punctuation on these signs

Martin