JKR

Today’s title is a trick question. The bookshop chain has put a rebranded identity into reverse gear, returning to the more traditional Baskerville font, and noting that the reinstated capital letter is more in keeping with their stature. But they have dropped their possessive apostrophe. So, did you miss it? Their logic is that it gets in the way of online sales. I’m no expert but I have never struggled to find Waterstone’s online without typing in an apostrophe, suggesting changing the actual brand name was unnecessary. Adding ‘.com’ to their name seems to me both dated and a rather desperate bid to advertise their existence beyond the troubled high street.

But this post is about grammar, not digital strategy. Does it matter? Can it evolve? Are we dumbing down or moving with the times? Like a good few designers, I am terribly dyslexic. Many others who aren’t still can’t spell for tofey. I sometimes wonder if part of the reason we end up as designers is a consequence of this – that our visual abilities are developed as a muscle to compensate for a lack of ability in writing. Whatever, just because we cannot spell does not mean we do not care, as evidenced by the many heated comments in response to Waterstones missing apostrophe on the Creative Review blog. And it’s not just designers who are annoyed, The Daily Telegraph carried letters of indignation as well.

The argument is not cut and dried however. Opinion broadly falls into three camps. Traditionalists argue that it is simply wrong, that a book shop should know better, and keep up standards. Modernists argue that language changes all the time and apostrophes, which cannot be heard in conversation, are outdated in the digital text-speak era. Then the pedants note that as Tim Waterstone no longer owns the shop, it does not need the possessive apostrophe. McDonald’s and Sainsbury’s bother, while WH Smith gets by without the superfluous ‘s’.

What do you think? I feel the evolutionary argument is a bit weak. I was taught at college that Roman carvers used to chisel Vs instead of Us because a sharp angle was easier to do. But as they were ok with S and O, I’m not so sure this is true. Dropping good grammar to function better in search engines seems like a rather abrupt evolution, and somehow less forgivable than helping out stone carvers.

I offer two thoughts. Firstly, how nice to live in a world so civilised that we can be bothered to debate the niceties of the issue. Secondly, I think Waterstones have been guilty of design inconsistency regardless of the rights and wrongs. Either be progressive and drop the apostrophe. Or be traditional, return to the bookish serif W, and the gravitas of a capital letter. But don’t do the latter with the ‘bad’ grammar of the former. That just looks all over the place. Little things can mean a lot. Just sayin’.