Squares and hardliners
There was a minor emergency somewhere in The Irish Times recently, I gather, after a rogue apostrophe gained entrance to the office and inserted itself in the name of a well-known charity, which was thereby rendered “Barnardo’s” in our print edition.
Investigations are continuing, of course. In the meantime, the controversy reminded me that I pass the Dublin birthplace of Dr Thomas Barnardo almost every day.It’s on Dame Street – or used to be anyway. The location of the long-gone house is now marked by a plaque on the ground at the corner of a small square also now named after him.
While there, I was intrigued to notice for the first time that the side-door of the adjoining building – City Hall – has an inscription in gold letters over it insisting that this is in fact “Dublin’s City Hall”, complete with possessive apostrophe. “Four days and nights of deadly adventures,” it promises. Which must be worrying if you’re an overseas visitor, unfamiliar with the non-fatal nature of deadliness in these parts. On a side issue, when we speak of fun involving vampires, surely the phrase should be “undeadly”?
I used to think “sick and indigent roomkeepers” were hoteliers or guesthouse owners who had fallen on bad times. On the contrary, they were tenants of rooms, unable to keep paying the rent or even to feed themselves. That would be “Max’s Place” in English. But so far, the French have avoided a plague that has been afflicting German in recent years: the importation of redundant apostrophes from English.
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