In something that many of you may have missed in the news recently, British book store Waterstone’s has officially dropped the apostrophe from its name. No longer Waterstone’s, instead now Waterstones.com, on the bbc website, managing director James Daunt said the amendment was a “more versatile and practical” spelling of the name for the digital world.
While I can’t help but think there is a certain amount of business sense in the move, I admit a small part of me does cringe slightly at the “dumbing down” of the English language. This isn’t about Waterstone’s (or is that Waterstones.com), so much as it’s about the general relaxed attitude society seems to take towards matters that are, let’s be honest, important.
Ok, so the English-lover inside me disapproves of the move, but what about the writer in me? This may surprise some of you, but the writer in me actually approves!
As some of you may be aware I currently work as a writer for a PR / marketing company. My day-to-day work typically involves writing articles and press releases for the trade press. As a bit of a stickler for grammar and punctuation, one of my biggest bugbears in my job is company names, and more specifically, names that imply plurality (when company names are singular), names that start with an intentional lower-case letter, and names that either don’t have an apostrophe, but should, and names that have an apostrophe, and possibly shouldn’t. Obviously I can’t mention any of the companies in question, but trust me when I tell you, trying to write about a company such as “Waterstone’s” is far more difficult than it may sound!
To prove my point, consider the following sentence:
So in conclusion then, a part of me does approve of Waterstone’s new name.
Note: “Waterstone’s” is singular. Replace the word Waterstone’s with a simple word such as “cat” and you will see that from a technical perspective, my sentence is actually incorrect, even though it does perhaps “sound” correct. Because Waterstone’s is in fact singular this also means you have to be careful when using “is” and “are”. Even with all my experience writing using names such as Waterstone’s, I admit I did have to go back and change my introduction from “Waterstone’s have” to “Waterstone’s has”!
Hopefully from this perspective at least, you can appreciate that perhaps the name change is a positive step. The only issue that remains then is naming the company Waterstones.com. From a business perspective, this is a very good move – it reminds the public of the company’s online presence, and furthermore, gives a “modern” edge to the Waterstones.com brand. I leave you then, on this: If you’re a major book retailer, and you’ve decided to drop the apostrophe from your name, naturally you might look a little stupid; after all, grammar is, in a sense, your domain. Add the “.com” however, and you have the perfect solution – you can drop the apostrophe, and by adopting the grammarless style of the URL, you still point back to your old name.
So, is this the future for retailers? A part of me thinks it is. Sad as it may be to see the old stalwarts of the high-street move away from their roots, in 20 years’ time there’s a good chance there won’t be a name on the high-street that isn’t a URL.
A guess it’s just a sign of the times.
