North Yorkshire apostrophe fans demand road signs with nowt taken out | Hacker News Reader

North Yorkshire apostrophe fans demand road signs with nowt taken out

theguardian.com

30 pointsperihelions51 comments

> to avoid problems with computer systems

What a world, eh? Surely someone out there must know the secret incantation to store an apostrophe in a database.

Came here to say the same thing. How can it be the case that we change our surroundings so that a computer can make sense of it.

Ironically a computer has no problems with apostrophes - it just another digital value - instead the way humans build software causes the problems.

Well, having some limitations seems reasonable. I think it's fine we don't allow smileys in street names. Or a while just is extended ASCI characters. It just seems that an apostrophe should be okay. Also weird that a local government gets to make the call.

They are the ones responsible for street signs. The computer system in this case is also theirs, as would be any cost to change the system to support apostrophes.

There is literally no spare budget in UK local government at present. This could be a big factor too in the decision making too.

Everyone should know the latter point if they don't. People blame and get mad at computers but the real blame lies with software developers and their broken systems.

Google screwed up my address by deciding that "E" should be spelled out "East". The county uses "E", the street sign says "E", Bing says "E" (not that they're any authority on the matter), but Google says "East" and now Walmart won't deliver things to my actual address.

I don't know a lot about systems/processes/protocol and the correct jargon, but my sense is that the problem isn't just technical. They could support ' just as well as E. But the scale of these automated systems chokes on these little quirks and they get amplified a huge amount and quickly become big problems.

I live in Finland, which has two official languages - Finnish & Swedish.

Google maps, on Android, decided that all street names are only Swedish when giving directions, and doesn't show Finnish names at all. Even though on the map you can see both.

Sucks, especially as I'm a foreigner.

Just today I was driving around UCLA on "Charles E Young Dr E", which Android Auto insisted on calling "Charles East Young Drive East". It was hilarious, the first "E" apparently stands for "Edward".

When Alexa devices first appeared, when you asked for songs by Dick Van Dyke it would beep out his first name when repeating it.

DC is divided into 4 quadrants, and to lift degeneracies they come after street/avenue/road/place etc in an address. So many GPS pronounce 815 V St NW as "eight-fifteeen V saint northwest" instead of "... street ...". Makes me laugh every time.

Utah gets particularly funny with the coordinate grids used out here. I've heard everything from one thousand three hundred and fifty five east two thousand south to literal readouts of the digits

They’re mutating data, that’s a skill issue

You have the same thing in Kigali, Rwanda. Most of the street names are just KG for Kigali followed by the street number. Google just insists that all of those are kilograms...

I really don't think that that is the real reason.

No traffic sign in Australia has punctation. It's for clarity when reading, nothing else. Safety first.

(citation needed). What safety/clarity is given by removing apostrophes from names? Especially in the country already using lots of indigenous names forced into almost-English pronunciation?

What is the mechanism behind how a different practice in Australia explains the officials lying about the real reason here?

Gell-Mann amnesia.

I don't think they lying; they are probably being selectively quoted and the article written to be as click-baity as possible.

Quoting is visible after you've clicked, so doesn't bait. Not sure how amnesia would explain anything either.

> I don't think they lying

You can't have it both ways, either the spokesperson explicitly saying it's due to database gives the real reason or a made-up reason, in the latter case he's lying

The database might be a minor reason. Or major reason. Perhaps the quoted person is not an expert. Maybe he's incompetent. Lying is not required.

Minor reason is still real, as is major, and you said there are no other reasons besides made up safety. Ang why do you need to be an expert here?

but I see you can deny even the much more basic fact that ' isn't punctuation...

Made up? Omitting punctuation from signs predates computers by decades.

So? There are more obvious explanations than safety

e.g.?

Check the other top comment you've already read for an e.

Do you have a source for that being a rule?

I'm pretty sure I have seen road signs with punctuation, but would have to go digging.

There's a fair number of apostrophes in fact. Here's an example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZSVi4GfuAgcUspm2A (Note that Google's database seems to lack the apostrophe in that name). Rules such as the following (NSW GNB) are common:

> The following types of punctuation as used in Australian English shall not be included as part of a geographical name: period (.), comma (,), colon (:), semi-colon (;), quotation marks (“”), exclamation mark (!), question mark (?), ellipsis (…), hyphen (-), solidus (/) and parenthesis (()). For surnames or other names that include a hyphen, the hyphen shall be omitted when used for a geographical name.

> 5 An apostrophe mark shall not be included in geographical names written with a final ‘s’, and the possessive ‘s shall not be included e.g. Georges River not George’s River. Apostrophes forming part of an eponymous name shall be included (e.g. O’Connell Plains).

The explanation in the NSW GWB guide is that it allows for consistency and predictability. If you know that a river is pronounced "Georges River" and its official name followed customary rules, you wouldn't know how it was spelt unless you knew if it was named for George or for Georges. Honestly, I'm sceptical of all explanations. It's more that they find them annoying.

Until 2015 the standard font used in Australian road signs AS 1744-1975 didn't have a apostrophe or a hyphen defined, but at least hyphens and slashes were defined in the related AS 1743 or state-based augmentations of it because they were used in signs like O'Briens Rd or time ranges on parking signs. The current AS 1744:2015 standard does have punctuation - and the standard punctuation for citing standards has changed in the interim.

The attached article says that apostrophes have special meanings to computer databases, but this comment (which uses various bits of punctuation) will be stored in a computer database even with apostrophes. It's not like we programmers are incapable of handling them.

But I also find the counter arguments to be a bit ad hoc. Are Australians so much worse at literacy because of a lack of apostrophes on road signs? Does the correct use of apostrophes materially affect literacy in any way at all? They want the apostrophes because they're used to them.

I wish we could just state the actual reason for decisions and preferences, instead of trying to make our reasons seem more logical and neutral.

Not sure I'd call the ' in O'Brien punctuation at all. It's an attempt to render Ó in our alphabet. But neither is punctuation in say d'Angelo either imho.

PS. Do you have links to the standards you quoted?

OK I should have said they use punctuation very sparingly.

I went looking for the Australian Standard for these things but it costs over $100 to obtain.

Also - I am half-remembering something I read like 30 years ago when I was working for government agency that dealt often with the geographical names board.

Maybe they could get a city council to go the Bobby Tables route and name a street something like:

Main');DROP TABLE roads;

I loathe the respective arguments that each side makes.

On the counsel (municipal) side, you have a bunch of people who have convinced themselves that we need to punctuation to let computers more easily read names, which is ill-informed in the way computers work.

On the other side, you have the classic “it’s just not right” garbage with a tinge of “our great English standards are going to hell in a hand basket” which is ill-informed on how language evolves.

I get it, as an Apostrophe Name 'aver I too am forced to remove it for "computers"..

"We're all Bobby Tables at heart"

https://xkcd.com/327/

> On the other side, you have the classic “it’s just not right” garbage with a tinge of “our great English standards are going to hell in a hand basket” which is ill-informed on how language evolves.

Ooooh I think this is a bit harsh, no? Language does evolve. But Mary’s Walk should have an apostrophe no matter what you say. That apostrophe does work: it conveys information about the thing.

Not that it’s important in this context, but in others, it is. So casting as curmudgeonly the desire to keep it is, I think, going too far.

There's also another aspect which has nothing to do with grammar and is simply about someone else imposing a new name over "your" neighborhood.

I mean, Mallard Road and Duck Road are both grammatically fine, but if some bureaucrat somewhere decides "Duck is easier to understand and read"...

Dunno, think you’re trying to eat your cake and have it too here…

> Mary’s Walk … [the] apostrophe … conveys information about the thing. Not that it’s important in this context, but in others, it is

The only information being conveyed here is a hint at the etymology, though, and as you rightly point out, that’s not important in this context, but it’s also sufficiently incomplete that the inclusion of the apostrophe could mislead. Was Mary a specific local woman, a reference to a biblical figure, a church, the surname of a local farming family, or a weird Northern word for something else? Is it a perversion of an old Danelaw word? Was it always a possessive name, or was that added by an enterprising local sign writer in the 1810s? St Albans is always written without an apostrophe or a dot, where ironically St. Kilda sometimes does have one.

I would suggest there are no situations in which this information is important to include in the name itself, and doing so adds a false layer of confidence that place and street names in the UK can be trusted.

> But Mary’s Walk should have an apostrophe no matter what you say

Where I live we have a major road called the Princes Freeway/Highway. The name originally came from "Prince's", but the apostrophe got dropped a long time ago, well before my memory, and now everyone pronounces it like Princess, despite being spelled Princes.

Maybe it should have retained its apostrophe, but it didn't and as a result it's now effectively a different word. As you are right to point out, language evolves.

As it happens I’m flying to Melbourne tomorrow.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40262883

221 comments, 7 days ago

California seems fine with apostrophes in street names:

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3902898,-121.9777759,3a,41.6...

Maybe don't shout out to the world that you're vulnerable to sql injection?

OK, is the "nowt" in the headline a word for an apostrophe?

I think in this case it means not having an apostrophe. That is, nothing as opposed to something.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nowt

Nowt is used in the north of England to mean nothing.

Google is telling me that it's a specifically a pronoun, which is interesting. Opposite of "it/that" = "nowt"?

Thats very wrong. Owt=Anything Nowt= Nothing. "Do you want owt from the shop?". "Nowt mate ta". Is usually how you would hear it.

Ooooh, that makes sense. I didn't know about "owt" either!

Nowt is a Northern English idiom for nothing.

“Nowt taken out” was an old advertising slogan for Allinson’s Bread[1][2].

1. https://www.allinsonsbread.co.uk

2. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=raJRe7J5m6g

as long as their not redesigning it so their streets are SEO'd. Mary's Walk Near Me etc.

Meanwhile, Torvalds' solution is to add more of the problematic characters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40062853

Not even remotely similar

The BS 7666 is just a rationalization. There is a definition of CharacterString to be alphanumeric, which would be silly to use strictly since that would also forbid white space and hyphens. Later in the spec there is a specific example containing an apostrophe. "Abbreviations and punctuation should not be used unless they appear in the designated name (e.g. ‘Earl’s Court Road’). Only single spaces should be used, and the use of leading spaces should be avoided."

So some system the council deals with can't cope, and they are trying to rationalize not fixing it.

Ffs. Why don't we just make all street names binary numbers, computers handle those really well.

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