A cartoon about the announcement that Waterstone’s booksellers are to remove the apostrophe from their name.
Cartoon. The joke here is that a bookseller = of all people – should maintain standards of punctuation. In the cartoon Waterstone’s is depicted as a market stall rather than a bookshop, with the Waterstone’s sign lacking an apostrophe, but with the label for the books on the stall containing an apostrophe. This apostrophe is the core of the joke. This apostrophe is known as the grocers’ apostrophe (or is it the grocer’s apostrophe?), which is a common symbol of bad punctuation.
A cartoon about punctuation, changing punctuation due to the internet (partly due to the fact that some punctuation isn’t allowed in urls etc), evolution of language,
Cartoon drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: wat001
