back to article Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

A row in the UK has locals and council members at odds over apostrophes, and yes – this does actually have a tech angle.  North Yorkshire Council recently decided to eliminate apostrophes from street names, because they and other punctuation marks simply don't get along well with geographical databases, apparently. This did …

  1. I am David Jones Silver badge

    Justification for an aesthetic choice? I assumed it was down to limitations of the underlying database.

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      I think - as the very last sentence in the article alluded - the point is that, particularly these days there should be no such limitations.

      Oh, and good choice for the image illustrating the article, by the way. Personally I prefer the one in Harrogate to the one in York.

      M.

      1. jake Silver badge

        I preferred the one on Cambridge Crescent, before the move a couple doors down into the Taylors building where it is now.

        I'm probably biased, though ... it's where I had my first grown up date. I did like the new digs, too.

        Hopefully "Tea at Bettys" hasn't become corrupted by the modern world. That would be sad.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        OTOH I don't think there really was a Betty at all.

        1. DJV Silver badge

          Yes, there was. I seem to remember she was married to Fred's friend, Barney Rubble.

      3. Smylers

        It's an excellent choice of illustration: Bettys are themselves an example of a name that originally contained an apostrophe but don't any more:

        https://help.bettys.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/4406578619921-Why-does-Bettys-not-contain-an-apostrophe

        1. Not Yb Bronze badge

          My last name did not originally end in "s". Thanks to my great-.-.-grandfather owning a shop, and various apostrophe shenanigans over the years, it does now.

    2. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

      the underlying database.

      I'd assume its more down to North Yorkshire Councils ability to operate said database and parameterise and and escape char''s etc

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: the underlying database.

        Exactly.... I've never heard of anyone else having problems and working abroad there are loads of street names with "'" in them. Sounds like someone screwed up badly and is now trying to hide behind a misinterpretation of the rules... instead of confessing and fixing the problem.

  2. Mishak Silver badge

    Database vs sign

    The text on a sign does not have to be the same as an entry in a geographical database - similar to how a database of people can have entries for "Legal name" and "Known as"!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Database vs sign

      The standard they are citing says that the text in the database should be taken from the sign.

      1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        Re: Database vs sign

        I'm seeing "the designated name", which is not the same thing at the street sign.

        I expect you have to pay people off when you change a name, though. Change it substantially.

        An address that may be interesting and maybe confusing is Blaeberry Gardens, Edinburgh. That isn't a misprint here, but I expect it is in other places. In fact I think it's fifty-fifty whether a street with that official name gets its sign correctly spelled anyway.

  3. JamesTGrant Bronze badge

    Tail wags dog

    The irony here is that the standard attempts to AVOID the name being altered. If only it stated ‘do not change the name, don’t add or remove contractions, don’t add or remove punctuation, don’t change the name by abbreviation.’ I’ll see if I can get the standard amended…

    Maybe SAP could sell West Yorkshire Council a version with sensible input validation that isn’t just [A-Za-z]. I doubt the database is a csv file…. Although maybe that’s optimistic…

    I think this sort of thing is egregious as it is casual cultural vandalism.

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge

      Re: Tail wags dog

      sensible input validation that isn’t just [A-Za-z]

      I once had to work with an "artist" who didn't get this. His idea was to have a wall of moving message-board signs (96 of them), each one of which would show the title of an article from Wikipedia, chosen by following links on a "seed" article, and then links within the links, and so on.

      Those moving message boards had character limitations of course so the artist sanitised the text sent to the boards (turns out that they had more characters than he thought, and that they also had a reasonably good in-built "translation" system so he could probably have got away with not bothering) but the real mistake he made was to store the sanitised page title as the link which he would next feed into his Wikipedia crawler instead of the actual URL. In many cases, this worked, but in more cases than you might imagine, even on English Wikipedia, this failed and his crawler ended up on disambiguation pages or search pages instead of back at the original page.

      It was such a simple mistake - and I spotted it pretty much immediately I started looking at his code - but he utterly refused to acknowledge it and insisted until the "artwork" was dismantled that there must be a bug with Wikipedia, or a subtle bug in link handling by Processing and of course, as merely the lackey tasked with plugging the thing in and making sure it didn't burn the place down (and never having written anything in Processing before, though I was beginning to tinker with Arduino), my opinion was near worthless.

      There were other problems with the artwork which I was allowed to look at. The boards were run from a single multi-drop RS485 line but instead of wiring it as a "bus" with "drops", which is what RS485 expects, it had been wired (effectively) "star", which was fine with a dozen or so boards attached, but once scaled up to the full number just stopped working. Rather than spending a week re-making that cable I think (if I remember correctly - it's well over 10 years ago now) that I solved that particular problem by using an RS485 splitter and being very careful about terminations.

      M.

    2. Joe W Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Tail wags dog

      ... and don't get me started on user names and passwords in the ancient SAP system a place I used to work at used. There were some wird restrictions.

      1. PB90210 Silver badge

        Re: Tail wags dog

        Had a password that was valid during sign-up, but failed when I tried to sign in as it contained illegal characters!

        1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

          Re: Tail wags dog

          "Doesnt like certain characters" was my theory when we used a technoolgically wonderful password generator to give super secure temporary passwords (and finger strain) to our users, then they couldn't log in. I mean I don't know that they were pressing £ in a password and we were receiveing $ or anything like that - but we didn't have the problem if the password was "justs omele tters".

          And yet many systems reject a password that doesn't contain £ or some other exotic symbol. Though I haven't heard of a system that considers some characters as "illegal" in the password field.

          1. Not Yb Bronze badge

            Re: Tail wags dog

            None of the "secure password generators" I've seen has a "try and make it easier to type on a phone keyboard" setting.

            1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

              Re: Tail wags dog

              Perhaps you're meant to have the password app on your phone.

              But if you can edit the random password value after generating it, then you can remove or substitute characters which you don't like. But that does make the password weaker.

              And I keep mixing up g and q. Probably since elementary school.

              For a while, I used the company's password generator, I may have been told to, which used punctuation marks freely. But then I only took letters from the generated password, and I made them lower case.

              As a side effect, I needed more letters, to get the same security, than the typical generated password - because I wasn't using "! " $ % ^ &" and I was willing to let that be known.

              So, I could generate two passwords, and use all the letters from both of them.

          2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

            Re: Tail wags dog

            ...I just reminded myself - setting up a new device - that some services don't allow a password with a space in it. But as very often happens, they don't tell you what can and can't be in the password, or they don't tell you properly. You find out. And so I've written out "thisi smyne wpasw" and it won't let me have it. At least, though, it doesn't let me set it - and then refuse to let me use it.

    3. AMBxx Silver badge
      Childcatcher

      Re: Tail wags dog

      I'm concerned that if they remove hyphens too, what would happen to York's 'Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate'?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Tail wags dog

          Ah, Dr Roberts....hmmmm....she keep me back after lectures anytime.

        2. notyetanotherid

          Re: Tail wags dog

          > I'm sure it had spaces...

          No, definitely hyphens, see e.g. https://flic.kr/p/VjZdQz

      2. LionelB Silver badge

        Re: Tail wags dog

        We need to talk about Westward Ho!, Devon...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Tail wags dog

          An old friend related the tale of their class reading Shakespeare aloud. One student had the line:

          Give me my long sword, ho!

          His pronunciation of it made it sound like "ho" was not so much "quickly" as a very insulting command to Lady Capulet...

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            Re: Tail wags dog

            Possibly it was America Online many years ago that censored Scunthorpe to S****horpe.

            1. David 132 Silver badge
              Happy

              Re: Tail wags dog

              Such a common mistake - variously known as "the Scunthorpe Problem" or "the Clbuttic Mistake" - there's an entire Wikipedia article about it.

              1. PRR Silver badge

                Re: Tail wags dog

                Thanks for the Wiki link.

                > known as "the Scunthorpe Problem"

                In days of bare-AScii chatrooms/forums, a Mr Richard Blick sold paints and decals, and a Mr Richard Smith sold transistors and jacks, and we talked online about their products and services. But they trademarked their nicknames, Dick, and forum censorships mangled their mother-given names beyond reasonable limits. (Blick sold-out but the company is going good after 113 years. Smith bailed on a declining market and sailed into a philanthropic sunrise.)

                Before the incidents recited on that Wikipedia page, Compuserve's "Breast Cancer Survivors" group was shut-down, IIRC repeatedly until someone got a clue.

                1. rg287 Silver badge

                  Re: Tail wags dog

                  Before the incidents recited on that Wikipedia page, Compuserve's "Breast Cancer Survivors" group was shut-down, IIRC repeatedly until someone got a clue.

                  As a general rule, they still haven't got a clue. Despite claims of AI magic, most web filtering packages sold to schools/libraries/etc are generally the same keyword based dross they ever were - they've just got a better of exceptions and edge cases so they don't nobble Scunthorpe, Essex and Plymouth Hoe.

                  They're perfectly happy to automatically block domestic abuse support sites, women's aid, sexual health (including nhs.uk domains), etc, etc until challenged.

            2. katrinab Silver badge
              Alert

              Re: Tail wags dog

              And then there's Ess*x, Suss*x, Wess*x, and Middles*x.

            3. Antony Shepherd

              Re: Tail wags dog

              There were similar problems with Penistone.

          2. sedregj Bronze badge
            Windows

            Re: Tail wags dog

            Other languages (eg Hungarian) would be able to pin down the right sort of o, oh, ho, eau, hoe, without all that messy insinuation and a massive dose of diacritics.

            How on earth do you get across ... I'll try to spell it out for non native English speakers:

            Ho! is an exhortation (basically an enthusiastic shout).

            A hoe is a gardening implement for weeding and breaking up soil. It has a longer o sound than ho! A "hoe" is also a (en_US at least, not normally en_GB) term for a prostitute, probably riffing on "whore".

            That ho! vs hoe confusion is delightful. Shake the spear wrote in Middle English and almost certainly used different vowel sounds than we use today. However, I suspect he would love that abuse of the lingo because that is what he did all the time. English is oh so malleable as required.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Tail wags dog

              Can you explain your comment "[Hoe] has a longer o sound than ho!"? The few times I've heard Ho! it's been pronounced the same as hoe (both with a long-o, like the name of the letter o).

              1. Little Mouse

                Re: Tail wags dog

                Obligatory Viz Letterbox quote:

                "Are Nice biscuits pronounced Nice or Nice? I always pronounce it Nice, but my wife insists that it is Nice."

                (With thanks to Barry Macbeth)

                1. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

                  Re: Tail wags dog

                  Sounds like a thing Mr Shitpeas would wonder about..

        2. Herring` Silver badge

          Re: Tail wags dog

          What a letdown.

      3. cleminan
        IT Angle

        Re: Tail wags dog

        The address of OG Games would become marginally less interesting for one.

        https://www.oggames.co.uk/store-locator.html

    4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Tail wags dog

      "Maybe SAP could sell West Yorkshire Council a version with sensible input validation"

      We have enough problems here in West Yorkshire and especially in Kirklees without SAP or new versions thereof and it wouldn't make any difference to the North Yorkshire anyway.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Tail wags dog

      @JamesTGrant

      Did you read the article? It is about the NORTH Yorkshire Council.

      As someone who lives in the former W.R.C.C. I am unaware of a West Yorkshire Council. That was abolished decades ago and now I have to put up with being governed by the Bradford Metropolitan District Council..Jumped up fucking pricks who spend taxpayers money into oblivion. And don't get me started on that useless pile of shit that call themselves Keighley council.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Tail wags dog

        Consider yourself lucky. At least your metropolitan council is named after a place within it. I live in Kirklees, the council area, not the actual Kirklees which is in Calderdale.

        1. 43300 Silver badge

          Re: Tail wags dog

          "Consider yourself lucky. At least your metropolitan council is named after a place within it. I live in Kirklees, the council area, not the actual Kirklees which is in Calderdale."

          It actually hard to see the logic with the naming of either of those. All of the West and South Yorkshire unitary authorities have one place in them which is by a considerable margin the largest, and with most of them the authority is named after that place - Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, Barnsley, Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford. Logically, the other two should have been Huddersfield and Halifax rather than Kirkless and Calderdale.

          1. Alan J. Wylie

            Re: Tail wags dog

            Cleckhuddersfax

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

              Re: Tail wags dog

              That's a sound I've not heard in many a year! Not since we got rid of the last, constantly jamming, fax machine anyway :-)

          2. David 132 Silver badge
            Thumb Up

            Re: Tail wags dog

            As for so many other things, we can probably blame Michael Heseltine for that, with his 1970s zeal to "modernise" county/administrative boundaries.

            Ghastly man.

          3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Tail wags dog

            "Logically, the other two should have been Huddersfield and Halifax rather than Kirkless and Calderdale."

            I don't know about Calderdale vs Halifax but I doubt that Huddersfield actually outweighs that of the collection of other towns such as Dewsbury & Mirfield to any significant extent. What it does show is that the whole thing was an ill-conceived mash-up of two quite distinct areas - more than two when the rural areas are taken into account.

            Nor is naming an area after Barnsley a good example. On that basis I can just about see Barnsley from where I live. It would have at least made more sense to have taken the ancient Agbrigg/Staincross boundary as the Barnsley boundary.

        2. katrinab Silver badge
          Meh

          Re: Tail wags dog

          Or Berwickshire, where the town it is named after is in a different country.

      2. JamesTGrant Bronze badge

        Re: Tail wags dog

        Old habits - sorry m’lud

      3. 43300 Silver badge

        Re: Tail wags dog

        "I have to put up with being governed by the Bradford Metropolitan District Council..Jumped up fucking pricks who spend taxpayers money into oblivion."

        Doesn't that apply to pretty much all local authorities?

        I do remember that on crossing the border into BMDC territory in 2020, all the pavements had one-way arrows tied to their lamp posts - wonder how much that cost? In N Yorks we somehow coped without those.

        I wasn't aware of the fuckwittery with apostrophes in road names though - their policy simply suggests that they are illiterate. Things have been going downhill in North Yorkshire since all the district councils were merged into one unitary authority - North Yorkshire is large (the largest English county) and has several distinct regions which have little in common with each other. From one of the places on the far west to one on the coast is a bit over a hundred miles; in much of England that would take you through several counties.

  4. Wally Dug
    Facepalm

    Et tu, Brute?

    Speaking to the BBC, St Marys Walk folk urged the council to restore the apostrophe lest "everything go downhill."

    So, is this an accidental removal of the apostrophe by El Reg or are you secretly siding with North Yorkshire Council?

    1. Joe W Silver badge

      Re: Et tu, Brute?

      Aint that the streets new name

      dang I almost typed in a questionmark punctuation is discouraged

    2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Et tu, Brute?

      The Royal Mail web site address checker seems to favour St. Thingys addresses and not St. Thingy's but also not St Thingys

      They aren't in charge - technically - but they do what they do.

  5. veti Silver badge

    BS7666

    From Section 1, Annex D:

    Standard data types used in BS 7666

    CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters

    Integer: a whole number

    Date: a date according to BS ISO 8601, in the form YYYYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD

    ... and that's it, that's the only types of data it allows. Which seems kinda limiting, from our perspective, but it could be considered enough to ban apostrophes. As well as hyphens, colons, brackets etc.

    Of course, a really strict reading could also be interpreted as prohibiting spaces. So it should be "StMarysWalk". I wonder how that would go down with NorthYorkshire council?

    1. alain williams Silver badge

      Re: BS7666

      CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters

      I quickly scanned BS 7666 and could not see a definition of 'alphanumeric'. But we live in modern times so I would hope that alphabetic would include everything that Unicode says is a letter.

      I am sorely tempted to persuade my local council to name a new street after some foreign person, eg François Mitterrand to see how they cope with ç. My next would be, perhaps, some Indian or Chinese person.

      1. yoganmahew

        Re: BS7666

        You don't even need to go that far. Irish names (O'Neill (First Minister of NI Assembly), O'Leary, O'Briain to name a small few).They took our land, they took our lives, they'll never take our puncuation!

        I work with a standard developed in the 1960s; it too doesn't allow punctuation, but it is nearing 60 years old. On the rare occasion I stray into modernity, string values have punctuation, escapted if necessary.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: BS7666

          Ah, yes. The Indian S/W house that replaced their programmers every few months as their visas expired and we, on the receiving end, would be sent XML broken by an apostrophised Irish name because the new guy had fixed the bit of code he didn't understand and must therefore have been wrong.

        2. Spoobistle
          Trollface

          Re: BS7666

          I think the councillors involved should be forced to move to De'Ath Row...

          1. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: BS7666

            I was interviewed by a Mr De'Ath many years ago...

            1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

              Re: BS7666

              WHAT DO YOU SEE YOURSELF DOING IN FIVE YEAR'S TIME?

              AH, SORRY, NO, JUST LOOKED AT THE TIMERS. FORGET I ASKED.

              1. David 132 Silver badge
                Pint

                Re: BS7666

                This deserves all the upvotes. Have a beer, if only because I can't get you & Binky a curry.

                1. DancesWithPoultry
                  Windows

                  Re: BS7666

                  I read that as "Binky curry", and thought we had gone back to the days of the horse meat scandal.

            2. JamesTGrant Bronze badge

              Re: BS7666

              In Dorset we had a Dr De’Ath but I think they become a consultant and become Mr again. Same fella?

              1. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge

                Re: BS7666

                Nope - my guy was in Horsham (though I was working in Dorset at the time.... dammmn... doxxed myself, if you know me!)

            3. YetAnotherLocksmith

              Re: BS7666

              I got his business card at Loughborough Uni!

            4. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

              Re: BS7666

              Were you there about the reaping?

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: BS7666

        "to see how they cope with ç"

        I wonder if that's why Brighouse no longer has aa road named Alençon Link.

        1. abend0c4 Silver badge

          Re: BS7666

          There's one in Basingstoke.

          I suppose the one at the southern end of the country is Alençon, fond de la patrie.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: BS7666

        One of my eyelids is starting to twitch like the inspector off the Pink Panther movies at the mention of Unicode. The recent pandemic (little thing, hardly spoken about) demonstrated quite efficiently how unprepared certain public sector systems were to receiving data that wasn't A-Za-z when it all really kicked off.

        1. heyrick Silver badge

          Re: BS7666

          My postie can read mojibake. God knows, some Amazon marketplace sellers put absolute gibberish on the labels.

          (note: rural France, so my postcode covers one large town and three villages)

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: BS7666

            "some Amazon marketplace sellers put absolute gibberish on the labels"

            And in the product descriptions.

      4. heyrick Silver badge

        Re: BS7666

        I live and work in France. At work there is a clocking in machine. It cannot cope with displaying accented characters. "Céline" comes out as "C?line", "Amélie" as "Am?lie".

        So this company, whoever it is, is making and selling stuff in France, a country with accents, that doesn't even attempt to show something logical (if it's a limitation of the LCD, then just show the unaccented character, that would be better than a question mark).

        Somebody ought to be shot in the arse with a Blunderbuss for that nonsense.

        Oh, and our timekeeping system uses decimal hours because, I guess, whatever script kiddie threw the system together couldn't handle base 60 maths. I kind of wonder exactly how badly we get screwed given that 60 doesn't evenly divide by 100. I mean, it might only be a minute, but if we're working around 220 days a year, well, that's nearly four hours that might be missing due to reality being bent to fit the machine rather than the machine really dealing with reality as it is.

        Just like here, getting rid of the apostrophes because the machine can't cope. Warm up the Blunderbuss, there's a suffering to be dealt out.

        1. Someone Else Silver badge

          Re: BS7666

          Upvote for use of the word "Blunderbuss"....

        2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

          Re: BS7666

          "So this company, whoever it is, is making and selling stuff in France, ..."

          The more astonishingly fact, surely, is that someone in France is buying such kit.

        3. Dave559

          Re: BS7666

          "Oh, and our timekeeping system uses decimal hours because, I guess, whatever script kiddie threw the system together couldn't handle base 60 maths. I kind of wonder exactly how badly we get screwed given that 60 doesn't evenly divide by 100."

          Sounds like the coder must have seen Superman III, and every part-cent for every rounded-down minute (of course the machine is going to round it down not in your favour) that you all aren't being paid for is finding its way to his bank account…

          (Either that, or they were trying to reintroduce the French Republican Calendar?)

        4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: BS7666

          "our timekeeping system uses decimal hours"

          I've used a surveying staff marked in decimal feet. The Hiller borer was metric, however. My very first FORTRAN program was to combine the two into a nicely tabulated set of figures so I could draw out the sections by hand.

    2. that one in the corner Silver badge

      Re: BS7666

      >> CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters

      > to ban apostrophes. As well as hyphens, colons, brackets etc.

      SPACES!

      That definition strictly read bans SPACES!

      (Ok, not the first person to point this out, but - SPACES! And it isn't even as if the N. Yorks folk speak *that* fast)

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: BS7666

        I haven't done any research on this, but my gut feeling is that spaces are more likely to cause parsing errors than apostrophes (or hyphens, commas or full stops) when fed to buggy parsing code.

        If the intent of the ban is to molly-coddle some code that ought to be expunged from this Earth then a whitespace purge is surely the most urgent step.

        1. Martin an gof Silver badge

          Re: BS7666

          I still have a diatribe armed and ready for anyone who sends me files with spaces in the filenames. The children were educated early on. Not that it often causes problems these days, but it does still cause occasional issues, and it's a right pain if I'm doing something at the command-line and can't rely on autocompletion to deal with the escaping for me...

          M.

      2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: BS7666

        Does not Yorkshire use t' for that purpose?

  6. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    I've seen worse

    In Rochester there was a road called simply "The Delce" and signed to that effect. Against strong local opposition the council changed it to "Delce Road".

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: I've seen worse

      Curse this sans-serif font - I read that as "De ice", i.e. the process of removing frozen water. And wondered what on Earth the back story was for that one!

      Not too far from me is the delightfully-named "Odge Gribble Lane". Named after a noteworthy local resident, but it never fails to bring a smile to my face.

      1. Joe W Silver badge

        Re: I've seen worse

        A mate had "Trenmore Road" (street? dunno) on his bike commute, which we jokingly referred to as "train more!" road.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I've seen worse

          Up Oakworth road in my town there is a street called Fanny Street. If our fucking useless councillors found out about it, imagine the furore that would happen!!!

          1. Kevin Johnston

            Re: I've seen worse

            Brighton has a steet with a very amusing yet also punny name...Bartholomews

            1. LionelB Silver badge

              Re: I've seen worse

              That's where the Council buildings are, right? The small street leading off it is Bartholomews' Mews. Quite near St Bartholomew's church.

              (I made one of those things up.)

          2. Neil Barnes Silver badge
            Headmaster

            Re: I've seen worse

            I live on a street with an umlaut in the name. Admittedly, it's in Germany, so I suppose there's some sort of excuse for it... but I am a Yorkshireman, and I can assure that my late father would have been writing rude (though very polite) letters to the council were he still a a position to do so.

          3. Martin an gof Silver badge

            Re: I've seen worse

            There's a Fanny Street in Cardiff too. If you look around that area you will see Minny Street, Letty Street, Flora Street, Gladys Street, Catherine Street, May Street and such. Obviously named after someone's daughters or mum and aunts or whatever. I suppose during the 19th century when these places were undergoing very rapid expansion, you had to think of something! Not terribly far away, the Adamsdown area of the city, quite apart from very obviously being named after some bloke or other (but what is the origin of the nearby "Splott"?) has System Street leading on to Sun Street, Planet Street, Constellation, Comet, Meteor, Eclipse and Orbit Streets; Metal Street leading on to Gold, Silver, Copper, Lead, Iron, Tin and Zinc Streets alongside Sapphire, Emerald, Ruby, Topaz, Diamond, Pearl Street and probably a bunch more.

            Street names is one of the things which make UK (I suppose, European in general) towns and cities interesting - certainly more so than grid-planned cities with "First Avenue" and such like!

            M.

            1. Andy The Hat Silver badge

              Re: I've seen worse

              Just wondering whether Slutshole Lane in Norfolk has been "adjusted" to modern standards?

              <time passes ...>

              (a dwarf appears fingering his etymological dictionary and wearing a quizzical expression>

              Luckily, according to the historic maps, it started as Sluts Lane then was changed to Slutshole Lane at some point in the 18/19th century. So presumably the incumbents originally lived and/or worked there but didn't have title on the land. So we're safe, Sluts and Slutshole are perfectly good names without apostrophes!

            2. Roj Blake Silver badge

              Re: I've seen worse

              Many towns used to have a Gropecunt Lane, but no more.

              1. Someone Else Silver badge
                Coat

                Re: I've seen worse

                Isn't that just down the street from tRump Tower?

              2. herman Silver badge

                Re: I've seen worse

                Gropecunt Lane… is that where the orange man lived?

              3. 4Candle

                Re: I've seen worse

                It's often now "Grape Street" or somewhere where the pub is called "The Grapes". In Oxford, it's now Magpie Lane.

            3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

              Re: I've seen worse

              There's an area near the University in Belfast with street names Cairo Street, Carmel Street, Damascus Street, Jerusalem Street and Palestine Street. It's long been known as "The Holy Land", even BBC news uses the description.

              1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

                Re: I've seen worse

                The Asian theme continued with India St just down Botanic Avenue. When I started in research in QUB one of the undergraduate's family home was there, closer to the University than the halls of residence & most student digs.

            4. Allan George Dyer

              Re: I've seen worse

              @Martin an gof, "(but what is the origin of the nearby "Splott"?)"

              Is there a local character called S. P. Lott?

            5. Vincent Ballard

              Re: I've seen worse

              Even more fun in bilingual regions / countries. Google Maps seems to select the language to show at random independently for each section of the same road.

              In Spain a moderate number of roads are named after the dates of significant events. Or, at least, events which the councillors at the time deemed significant. I have no idea which of the many events of Spanish history which occurred on the 2nd of April is behind the naming of the street C/ 2 de abril in my city.

            6. jake Silver badge

              Re: I've seen worse

              "what is the origin of the nearby "Splott"?"

              Old English. Means (roughly) "a piece of land".

    2. spold Silver badge

      Re: I've seen worse

      Backside Lane, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, DN4

      Dick Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH9

      Assloss Road, Kilmarnock, Scotland, KA3

      Semicock Road, Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, BT53

      Trailcock Road, Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, BT38

      Slack Bottom, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7

      Lickers Lane, Prescot, Lancashire, L35

      Spanker Lane, Belper, Derbyshire, DE56

      Grope Lane, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY1

      Hardon Road, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, WV4

      Minge Lane, Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire WR8

      Fanny Street, Cardiff, Wales CF24

      Court Cocking, St. Ives, Cornwall, TR26

      Slaparse Lane, Exeter, Devon, EX52

      Cock-A-Dobby, Sandhurst, Berkshire, GU47

      Crotch Crescent, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX3

      Titty Ho, Raunds, Northamptonshire, NN9

      Hooker Road, Norwich, Norfolk, NR7

      Butthole Lane, Shepshed, Leicestershire, LE12

      Willey Lane, Newthorpe, Nottinghamshire, NG16

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: I've seen worse

        "So you looked for them, then"

        The last, of course, brings to mind the classic line of cricket commentary "The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey".

        The villages of Overton, Middlestown and Netherton between Grange Moor in West Yorkshire were originally Upper, Middle and Lower Shitlington.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. PB90210 Silver badge

          Re: I've seen worse

          No one has mentioned Pratts Bottom!

          One of the boundary roads of Robin Hood Airport originally was un-named but was known locally as Letsby Avenue as it lead to the police helicopter unit...

          The name is now official

          1. cleminan

            Re: I've seen worse

            It's not the only one. Also in South Yorkshire and also next to a defunct airport, the South Yorkshire Police Operations Complex in Tinsley also resides on Letsby Ave.

            https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wjqh5iPwy7sAEpXd7

        3. Martin an gof Silver badge

          Re: I've seen worse

          The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey

          Unfortunately now widely regarded as apocryphal (they totally failed to find a clip to play for his obituary), though he was definitely responsible for a whole bunch of other similar phrases. YT link.

          M.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: I've seen worse

            I remember the end of Johners' obituary on the Beeb. It was a shot of a microphone with the sound of him dissolving into speechless giggles after the "failed to get his leg over" comment.

            We shall not see (or hear) their like again.

            1. PB90210 Silver badge

              Re: I've seen worse

              R4extra occasionally has 'An Hour With Johners'

              (the whole series is worth looking out for)

      2. heyrick Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: I've seen worse

        I was like "uh hu uh hu uh hu" (with eye rolling) until I got to Slaparse Lane...that one just pushed a little too far and I lost it.

        Have a virtual ->

      3. Fred Daggy Silver badge

        Re: I've seen worse

        From the Roger Mellie street directory, perhaps?

  7. abend0c4 Silver badge

    St[.] Mary's Walk

    The difficulty with the council's argument, which seems to revolve around correctly identifying a street in an emergency, is that the equivalence between "St" and "Saint" is a lot harder to allow for in a text search than simply disregarding punctuation marks.

    In any case, the definitive source of wisdom regarding apostrophes is well known to lie not with BS7666 but with greengrocer's.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

      > which seems to revolve around correctly identifying a street in an emergency

      That would suggest the character set limit is as defined by the established phonetic alphabet and morse code….

      Personally don’t see the problem (no apostrophes), given what we are talking about is signpost English.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

      I've just been looking at some places I know and all I can see is glorious consistent inconsistency! In Manchester St Werburgh's Road is spelled on maps and the tram stop with the apostrophe. But the street signs don't use it. The next road, St Brannocks – also a Saxon "saint" – is blissfully ignorant of apostrophes in all forms!

      I can understand not using apostrophes in street signs that are all in capitals: it's easy to overlook them and there are similar rules for diacritics in other languages: French road signs don't have accents, for example; German road signs retain the umlauts but infuriatingly use different sized fonts, rather than abbreviations with apostrophes, for long names. Given the time you have to read road signs, consistency of forms is key for quick reading, which is why many Germans try and learn the route they're planning before the set off.

      Then we can look at the history of the apostrophe: it wasn't used with the genitive to denote possession rather than the plural until fairly recently. The other Germanic languages that use the s-suffix for the genitive struggle with the apostrophe, though they have few words that use "s" for the plural so that there are few chances of confusion, say, between "Stefans" and "Stefans"… Though this doesn't make them immune from some other fairly odd decisions: Swedish uses the colon instead of the apostrophe in abbreviations so that "TV's" (or more simply "TVs") is written as "TV:s".

      1. abend0c4 Silver badge

        Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

        The other problem with apostrophes is that, even when present, they're not necessarily correct.

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

          I think that's a good argument for omitting them (on street signs).

          We should remember that punctuation and diacritics are supposed to be an aid to reading, specifically prose. I don't know how it's done in Braille or signing but there's no difference in spoken language with or without the apostrophe. Then I remember that the split infinitive brigade (SIB) will never understand the difference between and precedence of descriptive and prescriptive language rules.

          1. nijam Silver badge

            Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

            > We should remember that punctuation and diacritics are supposed to be an aid to reading.

            No, we shouldn't, because they aren't. Like other punctuation marks, they carry semantic information. E.g. Low-fat spread vs. low, fat spread.

            1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

              Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

              Which is why they're an aid to reading… signifier is not the signifed.

        2. PB90210 Silver badge

          Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

          I remember an MP tweeting that she had just been to the local "Farmer's Market".

          She was berated by pedants pointing out the errant apostrophe... she pointed out that this was a car park off the Finchley Rd (north London) and it was possible a farmer had been present, but couldn't be sure

      2. heyrick Silver badge

        Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

        "French road signs don't have accents, for example"

        Tell me you haven't been to France without telling me you haven't been to France...

        https://maps.app.goo.gl/x7TfiC7kvrLBJd2q6

    3. goodjudge

      Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

      One of the two main programmes I work on uses "St Marys..." and similar - except a few years ago some bright spark renamed all the "St" road names in the DB as "St." and the address search won't return any results unless you include the full stop. But whoever made the change forgot that there are a couple of blocks of flats starting with "St ****" and those remain dot-free.

      Confused? You will be.

      Thankfully the other programme uses boolean searching and doesn't care whether you type the full stop or not.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

      We've had a lot of discussions internally over the past few years around moving to storing AddressPoint values as the true address and then the presentation layer can mangle to/from that as required.

    5. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: St[.] Mary's Walk

      "that the equivalence between "St" and "Saint" is a lot harder to allow for in a text search"

      Given that these sorts of abbreviations have been in us for hundreds of years, shouldn't any half competent setup look for "Saint" and "St."?

      It's like, we would refer to "Dr. Zhivago" as Doctor Zhivago, not Duhr Zhivago (or however you'd say "Dr").

      These are known knowns.

  8. Ball boy Silver badge

    Perhaps Councils could adopt a different naming practice: "The walk that honours Saint Mary" fixes both the missing period after her title AND dodges the possessive term.

    ...or they could simply stop dumbing down our native language.

    1. Just A Quick Comment

      Up here just north of Southport...

      ...We have Ralph's Wife's Lane, connecting Crossens to Banks. Try sorthing that one out withour apostrophes...

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: Up here just north of Southport...

        The Lane of the Wife of Ralph?

      2. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Re: Up here just north of Southport...

        And is it pronounced Ralf or Rafe?

        1. Tom 38
    2. Martin an gof Silver badge

      The walk that honours Saint Mary

      But that involves renaming the street which is a whole bunch of planning applications. Omitting the apostrophe probably doesn't count.

      On the subject of renaming, wouldn't "St Mary Walk" be almost as good, and a lot simpler?

      M.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        >wouldn't "St Mary Walk" be almost as good, and a lot simpler?

        It sounds like a command. So unless local councils have gained much greater statutory powers recently I think commanding dead saints to take up their bed and walk is probably beyond their remit.

        1. Will Godfrey Silver badge

          Yes, but would they accept that?

        2. SAdams

          “ It sounds like a command. So unless local councils have gained much greater statutory powers recently I think commanding dead saints to take up their bed and walk is probably beyond their remit.”

          Yes it’s changing the meaning. Whether or not Mary is alive is a question of faith.

  9. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

    What is it with computer programs that can't figure out that they're working with data, not with code ?

    I've known the Bobby Tables joke for ages now and I still can't understand how that happens. If I type DROP TABLE USERLIST here, El Reg is not suddenly going to find that table gone. This is data, not code.

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

      It would have to be '); DROP TABLE USERLIST

      But even that wouldn't work, of course, because El Reg isn't that stupid. (And even if it were, and even if a table by that name does exist, I'm pretty sure it would have dependencies that would cause the command to fail anyway.) But is anyone, any more? I mean, I know that sort of thing used to happen back in the earlies, but surely we've all outgrown that stage by now? Haven't we?

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

        'Twas elsewhere on this site - the story about Nokia, in fact - that I read earlier today a comment about how early Android versions would interpret typed text as system commands. The example given was that typing "reboot" in a note or contact name would, indeed, reboot the phone.

        So confusion between data and code is definitely not a solved problem. One has to imagine that the sort of programmer that would make that mistake would also stick their socks up their nose and wear their shoes on their hands whilst licking the walls and dribbling, but...

        1. pdebarra

          Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

          Pretty sure I worked with that guy on wealth management software in a Fortune 500 company. I'm sure local authorities have much higher standards, though.

        2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

          Even more recently, last month IIRC, there was the problem for multiple computers languages handling command line arguments on Windows…

      2. Steve Graham

        Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

        I worked for BT when they owned Cellnet, and Cellnet had the idea of providing a web-to-SMS service, giving registered customers the ability to send a small number of messages per day. (Obviously, limited to prevent spamming.)

        I didn't work on that, but the group next door did. It was due to go live on Monday, and on the Friday afternoon they sent an email to colleagues "This is about to be released. Do you want to have a go and see how it works?" Well, I knew they were using Perl for CGI (that dates it) so I tried a few messages with special characters to see what arrived on my phone. I was able to work out how to get the code to execute a shell command which emailed me the password file. (Not very interesting. It was a test server with no actual users.)

        As I passed their office on the way to the pub, the place was a hive of activity. Apparently, they were at it until late that night.

        1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

          Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

          -T

        2. Martin an gof Silver badge

          Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

          In the early days of GSM I used to dail-in to some kind of text-based system (modem and terminal software) to send SMSes to my boss when he wouldn't have wanted to have to deal with a phonecall. Pretty certain that was Cellnet, I don't think Vodafone offered the service and Orange and One2One hadn't arrived in our neck of the woods yet. Very simple, no authentication at all from what I remember, just "enter the phone number", "enter your message" and it rejected messages longer than 160 characters. Would probably have been trivial to use the system for nefarious purposes, but we were all better-behaved in those days, weren't we?

          M.

    2. Michael Strorm Silver badge

      Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

      SQL injection relies on the fact that the data is- or can be- embedded within the SQL command (i.e. the code) itself and exploits the fact that quote characters are used to delimit string data and keep it separate from the executable code surrounding it. However, if the contents of that "data" string are being supplied dynamically by an untrusted user (e.g. via a web form where someone is expected to have typed in their name) and isn't properly "sanitised", it might itself contain quotes. These would prematurely end the data string and result in the rest of the supplied "data" string being treated as executable SQL commands- something a malicious user can exploit.

      This happens if you're creating SQL statements by pasting strings together, (e.g.) taking someone's name from a web form embedding that within an SQL query which looks up someone's data from the database system. So if someone types in "Jim", our web app creates the following command to fetch the data:-

      SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = 'Jim'"

      However, if a malicious user types in (literally):-

      a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM userinfo WHERE 't' = 't

      The resulting string (with embedded "data" string in bold) will be

      SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = 'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM userinfo WHERE 't' = 't'

      However, because the supplied (embedded) data includes extra quotes and other characters (including the semicolon which indicates the end of a statement), when this string is passed to the DB, it will see it as three separate commands:-

      • SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = 'a';
      • DROP TABLE users;
      • SELECT * FROM userinfo WHERE 't' = 't'

      And, well, you can guess what happens when it runs that "DROP TABLE users" in the middle...!

      One can "sanitise" user-supplied input to escape or omit such characters, but that's still risky- i.e. prone to error or oversight. This is why creating SQL queries this way (i.e. via string concatentation) is widely seen as antiquated and unsafe and (e.g.) parameterised queries are much preferred instead.

      More detail and an example here.

    3. nijam Silver badge

      Re: "these characters have specific meanings in computer systems"

      > If I type DROP TABLE USERLIST here, El Reg is not suddenly going...

      Where did that web page just vanish to?

  10. Alan J. Wylie

    This road sign always used to amuse me: Bronte Parsonagë. These days they've lost the diaeresis on Brontë.

    1. jake Silver badge
      Pint

      By eck!

      Good catch. Sir!

      1. David 132 Silver badge

        Re: By eck!

        Indeed. That's scaling the wuthëring hëights of ridiculousness.

        1. that one in the corner Silver badge

          Re: By eck!

          > wuthëring hëights

          They were a great metal band, but make sure you start with the third album, with that great ballad about the Shadows hiking in Dorset, "Walkin' on the heath, Cliff"

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Diaresis on Brontë was an affectation at the time and introduced by the father to suggest sophistication…

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Coat

        Nuh-uh, it wasn’t diaresis that killed her, it was vomiting and malnourishment.

        (Have an upvote for correctly calling it “diaresis” and not “an umlaut”!)

        1. jake Silver badge

          "(Have an upvote for correctly calling it “diaresis” and not “an umlaut”!)"

          Dude! Them there's röck döts, as any fuel kno.

          1. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge

            >> as any fuel kno.

            That's "as any fule kno" I will have you know!

            St Custards for ever!

            1. jake Silver badge
              Pint

              Tell my fingers. They know that fuel is a word, but fule shouldn't be.

              Mea culpa. Have a beer for your trouble.

        2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          AFAIK diaresis is the symbol of two dots above a letter and is thus equivalent to the umlaut. I mean, really, that's just the preference for Greco-Latin names in analysis, which is why we end with shit like ptermigan. Whether the symbol denotes a vowel shift as in the umlaut in German or Swedish, or the opposite as in English, French and Dutch, well, who cares. It's worth noting that in both cases the symbol is redundant as "ä" == "ae" (and is written so when the character isn't to hand) and "poet" manages two syllables without any additioal markings.

  11. Alan J. Wylie
    1. yoganmahew

      And even that list is outdated now. Ireland (Republic Of) now has postcodes, they refer to a single building.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Add the fact that almost all address forms in S/W assume that the address will be in a city however incorrect that may be geographically and historically.

      The link includes the town of Street, Somerset as a counter example. I once worked with a database where an address was listed as a number at High Street, Somerset. When on holiday in Somerset I checked. The business was where I anticipated: in High Street, Street, Somerset.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I used to live there

        According to local legend, the HIgh Street is the only street in Street. All the others are roads, avenues etc. This was supposedly to avoid confusion. Judging by the addresses on some of the post we got, the local postmen were well-used to deciphering dodgy addresses.

        1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

          Old meme is old

          Yo dawg, etc.

      2. PB90210 Silver badge

        There is a High Street in the middle of nowhere...

        It's a 'street' in the original sense, a track, along a ridge in the Lake District, with a steep drop either side (and 'high' as in 828m)

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Street_(Lake_District)

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "Street" in village names often refers to a Roman road. e.g. Spital in the Street on the A15, the old Roman road of Ermine Street and no doubt more hygienic than it sounds.

        2. Roland6 Silver badge

          Related to this discussion, I note that article draws attention to the difference between a tarn and a lake…

      3. Evan Essence
        FAIL

        When I let an online form use address recognition, I tend to end up living in London, London or London, Greater London. I always fill in such forms manually now.

        1. Martin an gof Silver badge

          address recognition

          Officially the town where I live is Caerphilly in the county of Caerphilly so "Caerphilly, Caerphilly" would be correct (or probably more correctly, "Caerphilly, Caerphilly County Borough Council"). The Welsh spelling, "Caerffili", is also legitimate*. I'm sure I've mentioned this here before, but back in the early days of address databases they were woefully incomplete and just for the heck of it I manually filled an address as "Caerphilly, Caerffili". To this day at least one address database retains that (well, I'm claiming it as mine anyway).

          M.

          *In fact most villages, towns and cities in Wales have two legitimate names. Some are more-or-less translations, some are simply transliterations (blame Victorian cartographers / census takers), some have the same origin but different takes on it while others have completely different origins;

          • Oswestry / Croesoswallt (translation - Oswald's Tree / Oswallt's Cross)
          • Cardiff / Caerdydd (probably a transliteration)
          • Newport / Casnewydd (new port / new fort)
          • Swansea / Abertawe (Swain's place - a Viking origin / mouth of the river Tawe)
          • Fishguard / Abergwaun (something to do with the port / mouth of the river Gwaun)
          • Dinbych-y-Pysgod might be mistaken as the Welsh for Fishguard but it is in fact the Welsh for nearby Tenby
          • Chester / Caer (caer = fort)

          I find this sort of thing fascinating (I dare say it's the same in Scotland and Ireland)...

          .

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Does anywhere in Wales have accented letters?

            A comment above about France reminded me: I think that the Welsh language uses accents, and even has two "unique" ones (w-circumflex and y-circumflex). Do any Welsh placenames use these? Given the protected status under law of the Welsh language (in Wales), there's scope for all sorts of fun.

            1. Martin an gof Silver badge

              Re: Does anywhere in Wales have accented letters?

              Without pausing to think about it too long, Ynys Môn springs immediately to mind. I don't think there are that many but I'll probably think of half a dozen others as soon as the edit window is closed for this post :-)

              (edit): there are several places with "dwr" in their name (meaning water / lake) but only a few seem to spell it with the correct accent; dŵr. I'm guessing there may also be several with "tŷ". This word, meaning "house" or "dwelling" is often one of the first accented words young children are taught as the "roof" on the y is easy to remember (cos houses have roofs). St David's in West Wales is known as Tŷ Ddewi (David's House) in Welsh, though Openstreetmap doesn't seem to have this alternate. Oh, and OSM also spells it "St Davids" without the apostrophe!

              M.

              1. Alan J. Wylie

                Re: Does anywhere in Wales have accented letters?

                You beat me to it.

                From The UK Gov Index of Place Names in Great Britain, download the index, unzip it, grep out all the usual characters, and you are just left with ! and ô

                Westward Ho! and Ynys Môn

              2. David 132 Silver badge
                Thumb Up

                Re: Does anywhere in Wales have accented letters?

                I wonder how many carelessly-coded address forms & databases have been buffer-overflowed by the full spelling of Llanfair PG?

            2. Disgusted of Cheltenham

              Re: Does anywhere in Wales have accented letters?

              Malaŵi isn't in Wales, but..

              In Cambridge there's St. Bene't's Church

              1. jake Silver badge

                Re: Does anywhere in Wales have accented letters?

                If we're heading out of Yorkshire, there's Regent's Park, Earl's Court, Queen's Park and King's Cross St Pancras. To say nothing of St Paul's, St James's Park, Shepherd's Bush and St John's Wood.

          2. Alan J. Wylie

            Let's not mention Torpenhow Hill

            1. Martin an gof Silver badge

              Slightly less complex, the children like to mention the River Avon - as "avon" (afon in Welsh) means "river".

              M.

              1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

                River river is quite common, I believe it's true for Thames/Tame/Tamar and some others. Makes sense too because locally we tend to refer to the various bodies of water just by their names: the Thames, the Mersey; the Tyne, etc. In days gone by, it would possibly have been the only river people would need to talk about.

                1. Ivan Headache

                  If memory serves me, there’s a river in Scotter (Lincolnshire) called River Eau.

                  1. PB90210 Silver badge

                    There is a small river in Devon called the River Piddle... and I've seen a wine from that area labelled 'Chateau Piddle'

                    1. captain veg Silver badge

                      Re: River Piddle

                      Here in Andorra we have a Riu d'Urina, complete with a cascade.

                      -A.

            2. Alan J. Wylie

              Only 5 or 6km from Torpenhow is Aspatria, which has its own problem. The locals pronounce it "Spyat-ree", posh folk "As-spay-tria", but the recoded message on Northern Rail trains says "As-spat-ria".

              1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

                Slaithwaite in West Yorks is Slowit ('ow' as in 'wow') in dialect, Slathwaite otherwise but used to be Slaythwayte to British Rail.

                1. cornetman Silver badge

                  Most Slaithwaite locals say "Slath-waite". In Linthwaite ("Linfit" obviously) though, they do say Slawwit.

              2. NXM

                Sneckyeat

                Someone not familiar with the area asked me where this was and pronounced it 'sneak yeet'. Took me a while to work out he meant to pronounce 'snek yat', Whitehaven.

                A sneck is a door or gate latch, yeat is a gate, both from the Norse. Also found in Geordieland.

            3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

              Or the Isle of Axholme

            4. jake Silver badge

              "Let's not mention Torpenhow Hill"

              Good idea. It doesn't actually exist.

              https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+debunking+of+Torpenhow+Hill.-a098250320

              On the other hand, Pendle Hill does ... "Pen" means hill. Pen Hill became Pen 'il, became Pendle ... Which became Pendle Hill, because, well, because it's British. So basically, we now have the rather imaginatively named Hill Hill Hill.

              1. captain veg Silver badge

                River of the valley of the river.

                https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/42.57788/1.61311

                The valley itself is named "Valley of the river".

                -A.

              2. NXM

                Torpenhow Hill

                Yes, yes, I understand.

                And yet there is a hill at Torpenhow. And the locals pronounce Torpenhow 'Trepanner' but no-one knows why.

          3. Charlie Clark Silver badge
            Coat

            Chester is straight from the Latin for castle – it was a a Roman port – to English just like nearby Personchester…

            Not so sure about Wales but Scotland now has quite a lot of road signs in Gaelic for places with Saxon (East coast) or Norse (North East) origin which I find not only confusing but patronising.

        2. PB90210 Silver badge

          I've just had a 'fail' from Boots...

          They have me as living in "London, City of London" rather than "London, Greater London" (or, as most do, just London)

          (City of London is just the "Square Mile")

  12. Pete 2 Silver badge

    stand 'ard

    > whether it's just post-hoc justification for an aesthetic choice

    The lovely thing about standards is that if you don't like one, just choose another. If there arent [sic] any that take your fancy, just create your own.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: stand 'ard

      The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from, —Andrew S. Tanenbaum

    2. Alan J. Wylie

      Re: stand 'ard

      ObXKCD

  13. neilg

    "Reached out to"!

    You must have bloody long arms then.

    1. Dave559

      Re: "Reached out to"!

      I would also hope that any sensible down-to-earth Yorkshire person would treat anyone using the (in this context) daft phrase "reach out", with the contempt that they would only too rightly deserve! "Talk proper, lad!"

  14. Forget It
    Coffee/keyboard

    But they were nothing but apostrophes

    Blondes brunettes and redheads

    Put the hammer down

    To pound a cold chisel

    Through my heart

    But they were nothing but apostrophes

    Oh baby

    This one's from the heart

    https://genius.com/Tom-waits-this-ones-from-the-heart-lyrics

  15. Captain Hogwash Silver badge

    Input validation

    Not a punctuation thing but I have to phone a building society later because their website insists that I enter the first, third and twelfth character of my password.

    The acceptability criteria for passwords on their site includes that it must be between eight and twelve characters long. Mine is currently eight.

    1. upsidedowncreature

      Re: Input validation

      I'd be more worried that it sounds like they're storing your password in plain text if they can check specific characters.

      1. that one in the corner Silver badge

        Re: Input validation

        It's ok, he doesn't really mean "password" in the way we mean it (but I'm willing to bet that the website calls it that!).

        If you really haven't come across this system yet, is a hang over from moving to the web from 'phone banking, where you would (still do) have to tell the person a subset of the "secret phrase" so that the phone operator couldn't learn it all and type it in when they aren't in a recorded call with you.

        Think of it as 8 to 12 totally independent, but very short, passwords, (hopefully!) stored accordingly.

        1. upsidedowncreature

          Re: Input validation

          Yes, but the secret phrase/PIN/password, whatever you want to call it, is stored somewhere in plain text, even if it isn't displayed in full to the customer service agent on the phone. Are you seriously arguing that's good practice?

          edit: Yes, I've come across this system often.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Input validation

            It may be stored encrypted and decrypted as needed. It could also be stored as all possible digrams or trgrams, salted and hashed.

            1. nijam Silver badge

              Re: Input validation

              > It may be stored encrypted and decrypted as needed.

              E.g. by a hacker.

              1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

                Re: Input validation

                A hacker with the key.

                If the hacker already has the database key he probably doesn't need your passwrd.

          2. that one in the corner Silver badge

            Re: Input validation

            Bit late, but as I have been impugned:

            > stored somewhere in plain text ... Are you seriously arguing that's good practice?

            Well, no. Ahem,

            >> passwords, (hopefully!) stored accordingly

            And what is appropriate storage for a password? Hmm? Give up? Well, Doctor Syntax has been good enough to supply a few answers in my absence from here, for which I thank him.

            And the letters you supply aren't decrypted and shown to the phone operator (again, unless the system is as appallingly designed as you believe it has to be): the operator just types your answers into their terminal and presses "check". The system then does the password-style processing[1] and comes back yay or nay. If you get it right then, yes, *you* have just told the operator that subset of your code, but if you missed one then the operator (again, hopefully) can't even tell which one (or two or ...) was incorrect.

            [1] hopefully (that word again) you know that passwords aren't checked by comparing the plaintext, whether by decrypting the contents of the password database or by, shudder, storing the plaintext in the database.

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Input validation

      It should accept a null value for the twelfth character, however, to force the input checker to recognise you have entered a digit in each field, you might have to enter a character and then delete it.

      I have a slightly different problem, just accidentally discovered the limit to one financial site, it accepts the setting of a 14 character password, but only actually stores and uses the first 12 characters…

      1. seven of five Silver badge

        Re: Input validation

        Sparda Bank in Germany? They know about that, they just can not be arsed to fix it.

      2. ThatOne Silver badge

        Re: Input validation

        This seems to be a fairly common problem (code copy/paste?), I've met it some years ago on a merchant website, which would happily let me set a 10-character password, but subsequently only accept the first 8 characters of it (choked if I gave it all 10). Message to support went unanswered.

        A variation on this is requiring the use of special characters, but actually silently not accepting some of those, so an "a§b+c#d" password is stored as "ab+cd". Endless hours of fun!

        1. Dave559

          Re: Input validation

          You're a serious masochist if you use § as a character in your password! ;-)

          I'm not sure if anyone can type that unless they have a non-US Mac keyboard, or is a dab hand with the <compose> key (which might not be available on an actual OS login screen, if you need to type it there)…

          1. Nugry Horace

            Re: Input validation

            Or they're somehow online from an Amstrad PCW. Those had § right there on the keyboard between ; and #.

          2. ThatOne Silver badge
            Devil

            Re: Input validation

            > You're a serious masochist if you use § as a character in your password! ;-)

            That's precisely what makes it interesting: Very rarely used, so less likely to be guessed. As for the keyboard, who cares: I use a password manager and copy/paste them...

            There is no brute forcing a password like "ꝷ‽ƝzA8ͲꞂ¶ʨﬔᵺs73▒œᴔῷ╟ʓ₩ʯkΦdb∩Ӝᴚꝷ1┬┴Qr‽Ɲ‰"... *evil snigger*

      3. stiine Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Input validation

        That was hotmail a decade ago... Then they changed their algorithm from one that only used the first N characters of the typed password to one that used all of the supplied characters...stupid fuckers.

    3. PB90210 Silver badge

      Re: Input validation

      I hated that system

      I pointed out to them that I would have to write down my password each time to extract the required characters

      (OK, so I cheated and had it tagged as a note in KeePass... but I wasn't going to let on)

      1. Vincent Ballard

        Re: Input validation

        My bank has an automated system to use it for authentication when you phone them, before they connect you to an operator. The bank also switched from numeric-only passwords to alphanumeric ones. But, and it's a big one, although you can enter numbers by dialling, for letters you have to use voice recognition, and the voice recognition fails spectacularly for me. The last time I tried it I made six attempts on the phone and then gave up and went across town to visit "my" branch.

  16. Ken Shabby Bronze badge

    Total BS

    I suggest they check out the definition of PAF (postcode address format) which what the UK Post Office uses for address matching. Apostrophe is allowed, if their address matching software can’t handle it, it’s a bug. If they can’t work out how to store in a database it is incompetence.

    1. dedmonst

      Re: Total BS

      Yes, PAF does allow apostrophes as in this example:

      1 O'Neill Crescent

      Barrack Road

      MAGHERAFELT

      BT45 6QY

      However interestingly, for the street quoted in the article the apostrophe is not present (you can check on the RM Postcode finder here: https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode

      1 St. Marys Walk

      HARROGATE

      HG2 0LW

      So I suspect the Royal Mail PAF team have a pretty relaxed attitude to this.

      Even more interestingly, I actually used to live on St Mary's Walk in Harrogate (and I don't care whether the apostrophe is used or not personally).

    2. Dave559

      Re: Total BS

      Do not start me on websites which let you select your flat (apartment) address from a list in the PAF form "42/3 Station Road" [1], and then move on to the confirmation screen where they then insist "Address cannot contain / character"!

      Seriously, probably a good quarter of the population of Scotland [2] would like to kill you, if we ever find out who you are…

      [1] It's bad enough that in many cases the flat is more commonly known as (say) "42 (1/1) Station Road": if the Royal Mail was going to devise a standardised (ah, yes) address format, it would have been nice if they had forcibly twisted the arms of councils, land registries, etc, to actually use it!

      [2] or other parts of the UK where flats are common…

  17. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    North Yorkshire is in no position to complain about meaningless names, given that the county extends as far south as Selby.

    1. TimMaher Silver badge
      Happy

      North Yorkshire

      And has just been de-Sunak’ed by Labour.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BGN's Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)

    There’s no hope for us if we start taking grammar advice from the Americans.

  19. wolfetone Silver badge

    "I walk past the sign every day and it riles my blood to see inappropriate grammar or punctuation," railed one resident.

    Makes me think they walk past foodbanks and don't bat an eye lid at them.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      I know what you mean, but I think another example would have highlighted the irrelevance of the nowtrage wiithout sounding pompous.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You can get riled up by one thing, be in a cold fury about another, resignedly sigh over a third, become apoplectic over a fourth, work in grim silence over a fifth.

      And channel proper anger at a social injustice into the driver for quietly, physically, doing something to aid, whilst at the same time being left with nothing but vocal disapproval over the grinding stupidity and petty incompetence of the ignoramus whose feeble grasp on power extends to street signs and no further.

      Those with a good grasp of the language and the ability to coin a quotable response are not of necessity unable to respond to the conditions around them.

      1. neilg

        Double negative..

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          > Double negative.

          If you are referring to

          >> are not of necessity unable to respond

          then consider what would happen if we attempt to simply replace the "two negatives" with positives - "are of necessity able to respond" - and notice that this does not carry the same meaning. Because of the modifier "of necessity" that lies between the two original negatives.

          You could attempt to forage for a way to replace that modifier and retain the positives, but by then you will have moved the sentence drastically away from the original form and making it unnecessarily difficult to recognise it as objecting to the original comment's implication.

          1. that one in the corner Silver badge

            Although the odd extra comma or two would've made the thing easier to read!

  20. Primus Secundus Tertius

    apostrophe problems

    The problem with the apostrophe is whether it is the ASCII vertical apostrophe or the literary freaks' curly apostrophe. No wonder databases don't find what you want.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: apostrophe problems

      Do you mean this ASCII character: ' or this ASCII character `?

      1. Primus Secundus Tertius

        Re: apostrophe problems

        Either, under the hands of an apathetic typist.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Megaphone

      Re: apostrophe problems

      Syntactically there's no difference in English but serifs are easier to read in small print. Also, typefaces have to cope with different conventions in different languages and include the relevant glyphs. However, I would like to see keyboards provide electric shocks for the abuse of ticks and backticks, designed for accents, for anything else, including shell script! This is unfortunately very common in Germany: Charly`s Bar

      1. MrBanana

        Re: apostrophe problems

        What I find most annoying are so called smart quote systems that insist on changing "this is a string with double quotes" into “this is now broken with different left and right quote characters”. Makes providing program code examples impossible for simple cutting and pasting.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: apostrophe problems

          ...or converting a dash "-" to a hyphen "–".

          Of course, I also award -10 points to the people who reviewed this document, and -20 points to the person who approved this document.

  21. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    And another council with more things on it's mind than mending pot-holes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck5k38lje2yo

    1. blackcat Silver badge

      One would hope that the council keeps their lamp posts sufficiently maintained that the act of hanging a hanging basket (likely from a pre-existing bracket) does not cause an electrical fault.

      The more likely safety issue with the hanging baskets is old chains or fatigued/rusty brackets and baskets and the whole darn thing ending up landing on someone.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        More importantly, I would hope it was not possible to get an electric shock off a lamp post; or should we be telling children not to touch metal and grounded lamp posts…

        Suspect the safety training, requires the person, wishing to attach stuff to a lamp post, to earth the lamp post before commencing work….

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Muphry's strikes again.

      Ouch!!!! Intruding apostrophe.

  22. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
    Joke

    New name: St Mary%27s Way

    1. jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid Silver badge

      New name: St Mary%27s Way

      Aaaarrghhh, that gave me horrible flashbacks. Where I work, our corporate IT is woeful at handling links between email, file explorer, instant messaging, our internal social media etc. Cutting 'n' pasting a link from one to another invariably adds superfluous prefixes like "file" and countless slashes of both forward and backward types. Often, all spaces are converted to "%20" which of course the receiving system won't understand. Our IT rules say to not use spaces in file names. One system always insists on opening links in a web browser, whatever they are links to. Sigh.

      And our IT people wonder why so many of us email files to each other instead of sharing links.

  23. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Slightly OT but still a place name...

    Is the middle bit of Royton-XI-Towns pronenced "eleven"?

    1. ChrisElvidge Silver badge

      Computer says 'Yes.'

      Yes

    2. ChrisElvidge Silver badge

      Yes

      And it's Ruyton-XI-Towns

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Yes

        Thanks & sorry about the typo. My fingers are getting a bit fat these days.

    3. Primus Secundus Tertius

      Is the leader of China Mr Eleven Chin Ping?

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Only to his friends. Winnie the Pooh to everyone else.

  24. drand

    Not even the worst crime against St. Mary

    A few years ago round my way a road sign appeared giving direction to St Mary,s Hospital. My complaints were not acknowledged, but it was eventually corrected.

    1. Nugry Horace

      Re: Not even the worst crime against St. Mary

      Maybe it was a ZX81 user. The ZX81 didn▝t have an apostrophe character, so people who needed one had to substitute the comma or an upper quadrant block graphic.

  25. PB90210 Silver badge

    But did the corrector make it "Marys'" or "Mary's"?

    It's one thing being pedantic.....

  26. Bebu
    Windows

    No one ever thinks of the poor Grocer

    the apostrophe has been their stock in trade from the advent of literacy. :)

    Arkwright once explained to Granville that the properly misplaced (grocer's) apostrophe was certain to lure the passing pedant onto the premises and into the mercenary clutches of an experienced grocer and from whom the poor victim would only escape with a lighter purse.

    1. The Bobster

      Re: No one ever thinks of the poor Grocer

      Presumably Jerry Seinfeld would keep all his lighter's in a european carry-all.

  27. Tron Silver badge

    Fix the standard and the databases.

    We really need better governance at all levels. Everyone in a position of power or authority in the UK appears to be incompetent, corrupt or both. Tech should be designed for our lives, not our lives redesigned for tech.

  28. trevorde Silver badge

    Just hope Elon Musk's kids don't have roads named after them

    Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, or 'Y' for short

    X Æ A-XII Musk, 'X' for short

    https://www.newsweek.com/grimes-elon-musk-baby-y-exa-dark-sideral-musk-1686839

  29. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
    WTF?

    Prepare the statements

    The year is 2024. This is still a problem?

  30. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    This apostrophe would cause non-locals a bit of puzzlement given that it replaces 5 letters not to mention the missing 'U' from 'BURY':

    https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.6449441,-1.7758415,3a,37.5y,171.44h,79.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6j2bb7p8he-sGAhCV59-6w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      Maybe these guys should relocate there?

      https://abry.global/

  31. cornetman Silver badge

    I'm really dismayed to hear commentators talking about "escaping special characters".

    If you're crafting SQL statements by pasting text together from outside sources, you're doing it wrong! Please don't.

    I guess that might make sense when crafting URLs but perhaps use proxy ids instead.

  32. Someone Else Silver badge

    Implemented in 1890, the BGN's Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) "discourages" the use of the possessive apostrophe in place names, with only five exceptions granted since enforcement began: Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; Ike's Point, New Jersey; John E's Pond, Rhode Island; Carlos Elmer's Joshua View, Arizona; and Clark's Mountain, Oregon.

    I wonder how O'Hare airport escaped the GNIS' slimy clutches.

    1. mikeHingley

      1890? Are we sure about the implementation year?

      might be it be 1980?

      1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

        Re: 1890? Are we sure about the implementation year?

        No, surprisingly, the BGN was established in 1890 and has been going since then. See the links in the story.

        C.

  33. xyz Silver badge

    I still love The Telegraph (and others) who bought that P. O. S.....

    Where they have to use of the word percent instead of %.

    Still makes me laugh.

    1. PRR Silver badge

      Re: I still love The Telegraph (and others) who bought that P. O. S.....

      > use of the word percent instead of %.

      Hey, yeah!!! The local newpaper's proofreader retired, and for years the copy was full of escaped entities. Any time they hit a French letter (here next to Quebec logger country, that can happen a lot). I have not noted it in a few years. Maybe patched? Or maybe the paper is just so shrunken that they hit a foreign character only every blue moon?

  34. STOP_FORTH Silver badge
    Facepalm

    A question

    Middlesbrough was in the North Riding once upon a time. Roadsigns and white paint on roads usually abbreviates this to Middlesbro'. I think I may have seen Midd'bro as well. (Not been up there in a while.)

    Will their database be instructing the white letter painters to use Middbro now?

    Edit: I think I may have seen M'boro as well.

  35. DS999 Silver badge

    Imagine if EU countries were this dumb

    Losing your umlauts in Germany, accents in Spain, and further afield weirder stuff like double accents, and whatever the "hat" and accent underneath a letter are called.

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Imagine if EU countries were this dumb

      Whilst that's acute thought, losing the accents in French would be a grave matter.

      whatever the "hat" and accent underneath a letter are called

      FYI - Circumflex and Cedilla (pronounced "sedilla"), respectively.

      Thank you Mrs Flitcroft for all those GCSE French lessons so many years ago :)

  36. bernmeister
    FAIL

    Stupid

    Stupid. Remove the punctation from the data base but retain it on the printed road signs. A bit of common sense, or is that asking too much from the council mind?

    1. 43300 Silver badge

      Re: Stupid

      "Remove the punctation from the data base but retain it on the printed road signs. A bit of common sense, or is that asking too much from the council mind?"

      That would confuse poscode and delivery systems!

      Just keep the apostrophes everywhere. It's not hard to design systems which can cope with it - CRM databases have to cope with it as there are plenty of surnames wich contain an apostrophe.

      1. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: Stupid

        CRM databases have to cope with it as there are plenty of surnames wich contain an apostrophe

        Unless they make people change their names. This happened to a lot of emigrants to the US in the Ellis Island days, and there wasn't any sort of a system of rules it just depended on whatever the official checking them in felt like. Supposedly Donald Trump's family was Drumpf in Germany.

        1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
          Stop

          Re: Stupid

          That's a bit of an urban legend:

          https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-did-ellis-island-officials-really-change-names-immigrants-180961544/

          "“If anything, Ellis Island officials were known to correct mistakes in passenger lists,” says Philip Sutton, a librarian in the Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, at the New York Public Library, in a blog post delving into the name change mythology.

          More commonly, immigrants themselves would change their names, either to sound more American, or to melt into the immigrant community, where they were going to live, says Sutton. If name changes happened with any frequency on Ellis Island, it was not noted in any contemporaneous newspaper accounts or in recollections from inspectors, Sutton says."

          1. stiine Silver badge

            Re: Stupid

            They could all spell? And had passage tickets with their names on them?

            I doubt it because my family name changed mid-Atlantic, between the low country and North America.

          2. jake Silver badge

            Re: Stupid

            Regardless of what Sutton states, I know for a fact that all eight of my great grandparents had their surname changed by the folks on Ellis Island. A few also had their given name changed (or "adjusted"). Family lore says that the officials couldn't read their paperwork, nor understand what they were saying, so they just guessed to keep the line[0] moving. All were emigrating from the north of Finland. All arrived on separate boats, over a period of a couple decades in the mid-late 1800s, and somehow managed to find their way to the north coast of California (fishing and timber).

            Fortunately, all of them made certain to pass along who they really were to their sprog, and down through the years. Rather amazingly, the family still has all of their original paperwork, and as of the late 1970s we are now back in touch with most of our kin in "the old country" (some branches went missing over the years; seems that living in close proximity to the Soviets had that effect on many families).

            [0] British readership: For "line" in this context, please instead read "queue". Ta.

  37. Iggle Piggle

    English really is an lazy language :-) Oops sorry those last three characters are probably banned. So imagine that this software company was delivering their product to France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, or any of the countless other countries where accents and other characters are just normal everyday occurrences, are they going to simply tell Johnny foreigner to play by English rules? Coding for characters other than A-Z really isn't much to ask.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      > are they going to simply tell Johnny foreigner to play by English rules?

      Basically that is what the computer industry did in the early days when 7-bit ASCII was the Standard.

      In some respects it is why the extended character set Standards were such a big issue in the early to mid 1980s.

  38. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    This is the way to do it

    Instead of just printing nonsense from the organisation verbatim at the end of the story as is the style these days, actually prove it's nonsense and get back to them. They probably won't answer but at least it's clear to readers that it's nonsense.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Would the database in question be an Excel sheet written by a clueless user?…

  40. Fursty Ferret

    Didn't seem to stop them adding a sign saying "Caution: Tractor's Turning" near me.

    1. that one in the corner Silver badge

      Isn't that sign for the bit of land which belongs to old Tractor Tim? The farm with the rainwater runoff risk of reducing ground to mud? Warning you that the side road Tractor's Turning is Tractor's tract where tractors turning in torrents are treacherous

      Not to be confused with the Lorry's Loading, where despite the labelled loads laying 'longside the layby by Laurie's Lading, the signwriter just got it wrong.

      1. jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid Silver badge

        Tractor's Turning

        I often see signs like this that look wrong, but I like to imagine how they could be right. "Tractor's Turning" could be a warning of a single tractor that is turning. Niche, but possible.

        A town I used to live in had a convenience shop called "EAT'S AND TREATS". A friend once explained how he knew the owner (a lady called Eileen Allen Turner) and that despite appearances, the grammar in the shop name was correct.

  41. Jim Whitaker

    Sounds like a simple data type choice error. Change that and improve data entry validation. Bingo. (Oh and then find and sack the idiots who took the casual route instead.)

  42. Ol'Peculier
    FAIL

    There are several streets in Scarborough, Queen Margaret's Road and around Lady Edith's estate where signs at each end of the street contradict each other...

  43. AndrueC Silver badge

    Sometimes there can be too much punctuation.

    Thankfully it was eventually fixed.

  44. AbsolutePendant

    Grammar Pedantry

    It seems the article has been overly concerned about grammar without checking its own. Post Hoc is not hyphenated (and nor is Ad Hoc). That has nothing to do with database syntax, unless the Romans had invented one we don't know about.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Grammar Pedantry

      "Post hoc is not hyphenated, nor is ad hoc."

      FTFY

  45. Jamie Jones Silver badge

    ""This restricts the use of punctuation marks and special characters to avoid potential problems when searching the databases as these characters have specific meanings in computer systems," the spokesperson added. "

    What bollocks - as the article alluded to with it's reference to little Bobby Tables. Do they think that a string following a dollar will be converted to a local variable, or one forllowing % becomes a format specifier?

    As for the UI level, there's nothing stopping the apostrophe being stripped from both user input and database output when doing a search-match.

  46. chris@martin.cc

    Spaces are worse

    A name sanitiser added to the input will solve the apostrophe problem. They are easily striped out.

    You can have a display name with apostrophe and the sanitiser name used for lookups.

    But spaces... Il is it

    West lake or westlake

    Green point or Greenpoint

    Ahhhhh

  47. davenewman

    Election management database

    They were probably refering to their elections management database, not their GIS database. There are several which just stuff anything in the fields without escaping characters. In Oxford, every ' is replaced by a grave accent ` . So there is a St Mary`s ward in their database. I wrote a Perl script to fix that (and the strange address fields) in CSVs of their electoral register.

  48. Pomgolian
    FAIL

    Legacy Code

    I took on a new client recently. They had a custom PHP app written by an old guy who was retiring. Among the jewels he left was a page containing a form that proudly stated:

    Do not use apostrophe's [Sic]

    I didn't know it was possible to despair for two different reasons simultaneously, but I managed it.

  49. Spoobistle
    FAIL

    Howls of derisive laughter...

    ... from across the globe have persuaded the council to replace the "apostrophe's" and other punctuation:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0r04g2xwdo

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