WHATS WRONG WITH THIS SENTENCE?

You guessed it. It's missing an apostrophe before the letter S in "WHATS". What does the apostrophe sign have to do with a battle in Britain? Why fight when we can easily follow the rules of the English language?

The battle is not that easy to solve. It involves the apostrophe and is being "fought" between people who love the English language and those who want the apostrophe removed from street signs.

In earlier 2014, a teenager died of an asthma attack after an apostrophe mistake caused an ambulance to go to the wrong address. After this incident, the government advised that apostrophes be removed from street signs so that emergency services such as ambulances and fire engines would not go to the wrong address.

The problem was that apostrophes were not recognised by the computer software of emergency services.

The latest victim of this battle was the apostrophe in the street name "King's Road" which was changed to "Kings Road". However, after a group of punctuation protectors protested by going out in the middle of the night to fill in the missing apostrophes with black marker pens, the decision was changed to restore the apostrophe in "Kings Road".

In countries such as the United States and Australia, apostrophes disappeared from street signs a long time ago.

This matter is so serious that the Apostrophe Protection Society has been formed. Founder and chairman, John Richard, is unhappy about the falling standards of English. He said, "I think people are very lazy or very ignorant and the language is declining, is getting worse. It is setting a very bad example because teachers are teaching our children punctuation and then they see road signs with apostrophes removed."

1. Can you give three reasons why punctuation is important?

2. Can you tell the difference between "it's" and "its", or "who's" and "whose"?

Featured image: Road signs with apostrophes in central London on March 20, 2014. Image credit: AFP PHOTO / CARL COURT