The greengrocer's apostrophe has made its way to Japan - as shown in this selection of Japanese signs. Delight in further punctuation schadenfreude here.
Reminds me of the days when the English Department I taught in decided the only sensible thing to do was to ban the use of the apostrophe (it was less confusing and considerably less irritating to have it missing than to have it everywhere)...
Sandra, the BMJ, before I started working there, banned the hyphen - apart from in words with non-, and with -like (eg, memorably, jelly-like mucus). What fun we had!
As a result, we had to unravel the most awful knots of noun phrases. Sometimes this made sentences a bit stilted - but oh, what ambiguities it uncovered; how many queries to author resulted...
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Reminds me of the days when the English Department I taught in decided the only sensible thing to do was to ban the use of the apostrophe (it was less confusing and considerably less irritating to have it missing than to have it everywhere)...
Sandra, the BMJ, before I started working there, banned the hyphen - apart from in words with non-, and with -like (eg, memorably, jelly-like mucus). What fun we had!
As a result, we had to unravel the most awful knots of noun phrases. Sometimes this made sentences a bit stilted - but oh, what ambiguities it uncovered; how many queries to author resulted...
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