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North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

bbc.co.uk

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Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#201

Post by graypegg »

tomn wrote: post #152
graypegg wrote: post #80

As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666Guid... # Standard data types used in BS 7666 CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters ... If I had to guess, alphanumeric is interpreted as [0-9a-z]. The s…

The actual standard (well, the previous version, BS 7666-1:2006) does contain that wording, but also says: > Abbreviations and punctuation shall not be used unless they appear in the designated name, e.g. “Dr Newton’s Way”, and only single spaces shall be used. Given that "alphanumeric" is vague, not defined, and prominently contradicted, I'd say it's quite clear that they can't really blame it on BS 7666. The counci…

Ahhh I was looking for something like that! Good find.

So, even worse than imagined... it's an ambiguous standard blamed for a bad implementation of that standard.

Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#202

Post by macleginn »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #176
macleginn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite example is a small road in Killarney called The Hahah in English but in Irish written "An Fhaiche" in one place and "An Háhá" in another. OpeStreetMap seems to designate the first one as name:ga and the second one as alt_name:ga.

This is a recurring problem in Ireland due to nationwide local government incompetence in using the Irish language. Centuries old Irish language place names get replaced with bastard gaelicised versions of their English names, and now you’ve a mishmash of signage all over the place. Often the new names are just an invention of the council that sort of sounds right.

This is very true, but there is also an issue of which Irish orthography to use, right? Place names are very conservative, but modern speakers would be more used to O'Donnell's dictionary's variants than to ones from Dinneen, basically. Paradoxically, English forms sometimes give hints as to the correct pronunciation.

Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#203

Post by eesmith »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #194
eesmith wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. But that doesn't really fit since þ had mostly died out by the 1300s, with only few remaining uses by Caxton's printing - long before the 1800s. I also wouldn't call those typewriters or cheap printing presses.

Is there something relevant about the 1800s? I said þ was an example of the written language changing to accommodate the printing press, not changing to accommodate the 1800s.

I had responded to msla's comment about "typewriters and cheap printing presses". Those didn't exist in the 1500s.

þ's disappearance from English is not due to either, though the lack of þ in available type faces was certainly an issue.

Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#204

Post by jasonm23 »

colloydi wrote: post #101
devsda wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS in "BS 7666" stands for British Standard and not anything else. If the standard restricts street names to those certain characters, may be it really is BS .

The '666' portion doesn't inspire confidence either. We love apostrophes so much we have them on our supermarkets. If they're not there we add them. e.g. I'm going to Sainbury's e.g. I'm going to Tesco's ...despite the fact that it's real name is plain old Tesco.

Fun fact, Lotus (Tesco's Thailand stores) have an erroneous apostrophe: "Lotus's" ...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Lotus%27...

Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#205

Post by [deleted] »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #166
arrowsmith wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. We don't apply this "rule" to any other establishment, e.g. people don't say "I'm going to Burger King's" or "I'm going to Costa's". There's nothing to analyze: "Tesco's" is just wrong . It's not the name of the business.

Costa’s I for sure have heard. Burger King’s I agree though.

[deleted]

Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#206

Post by Digit-Al »

colloydi wrote: post #101
devsda wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS in "BS 7666" stands for British Standard and not anything else. If the standard restricts street names to those certain characters, may be it really is BS .

The '666' portion doesn't inspire confidence either. We love apostrophes so much we have them on our supermarkets. If they're not there we add them. e.g. I'm going to Sainbury's e.g. I'm going to Tesco's ...despite the fact that it's real name is plain old Tesco.

I say Sainsbury's because the name is exactly that. I don't say Tesco's because the name, as you say, is Tesco. I would guess those who say Tesco's (and maybe Asda's) are just getting confused because of Sainsbury's.

Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#207

Post by iraqmtpizza »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #86
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol no. arguably the word ain't is more proper English than Chris' or boss'

It is trivial to find more than sufficiently authoritative source that cover the rules that make "Chris'" and "boss'" perfectly value contracted possessives in English. [1] However, it's English: there isn't just one rule , another rule can also be valid and might be the one you're familiar with on a day to day basis. That doesn't mean any other way to say or write the same thing is wrong, it's just a pattern you nev…

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Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#208

Post by iraqmtpizza »

swores wrote: post #105
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol no. arguably the word ain't is more proper English than Chris' or boss'

Being confident doesn't change the fact that you're misinformed about English grammar.

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Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#209

Post by iraqmtpizza »

shadowgovt wrote: post #68
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Some writers" say that the French Foreign Legion has been deployed to the front lines in Ukraine too. We must take this very seriously, then! Some writers write things like Four Fat Harvard Girls Lose Book Bag too. They use sentence fragments. They try to save ink by doing weird shit. Professional Buzzfeed writers write AF (yes, in caps) to mean as fuck. The Atlantic used the words electroöptical and rôles in 1940.…

Rules, especially in English, are not grounded in any agreed-upon authority and never have been, tracing all the way back to Chaucer more-or-less codifying the written form of the language by simply writing one story that then became the most popular English printed work for a generation. Try not to lean too hard on how other people use the language just because it ain't how you use it. Makes you look outta touch wit…

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Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

#210

Post by DarkmSparks »

shadowgovt wrote: post #157
DarkmSparks wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that could still be ' handling, try to sql (`type`:'express post',`from`:'st mary's street',`value`:'50') and it will drop the value field, throw an error, and quite possibly duplicate several type and half filled froms depending on how the error handling is done. This article is basically admitting its cheaper to change the street names than unfux their buggy software, so something is up. what are the other options…

The software glitch that was involved in 1,000 people being arrested had nothing to do with street names. By this point, the flaws are pretty well-documented. If you find anything in the reports about handling of apostrophes, feel free to cite it. The underlying communication protocol from node to node wasn't even SQL; it was an XML format called "Riposte." There was, perhaps, SQL involved in eventual account databas…

source for it being well documented? xml suffers apostrophe issues to.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post... says As early as 2001, McDonnell’s team had found “hundreds” of bugs. A full list has never been produced,

seems almost guaranteed to me it had apostrophy bugs.

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