Birmingham, England, is officially giving up the fight for the proper use of the apostrophe. From the Times Online:
After a tense grammatical debate Birmingham City Council has decreed that possessive apostrophes shall no longer appear on its street signs.
No ceremony marked this expulsion from the municipality, only a statement from Martin Mullaney, chairman of the council’s transportation scrutiny committee. He noted that for some time the apostrophe had been slipping from signs all over the city.
Mr Mullaney argued that since the monarchy no longer owned Kings Heath, or Kings Norton, and since the Acock family no longer owned Acocks Green, the punctuation marks that once appeared in those names were now redundant.
Times writer Will Pavia notes that the US government threw the apostrophe overboard a long time ago, with very few exceptions (one of which is Martha's Vineyard, here in Massachusetts).
UPDATE: Oops. A reader points out a consequence of not proofreading blog entries:
Interesting point of view, but have you started a new movement by dropping Rs? I see you left the "r" out of "apostophes" in your headline. I thought dropping Rs in the state of Massachusetts was just something that was done in speech but not in writing. ;-)
Glad to know Matha's Vineyard, oops, I mean Martha's Vineyard still has it right.
I deeply reget the mistake.