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Outrage as bookshop drops apostrophe

Kevin Murphy, January 12, 2012, Gossip

The lunatic fringe of the British press is having a field day today with the news that high-street bookseller Waterstone’s has changed its name to Waterstones.
The apostrophe has been dropped to make the brand more domain name friendly, according to managing director James Daunt.
“Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling,” he reportedly said.
The Daily Mail, never a rag to avoid pandering to traditionalists, said the rebranding “sparked outrage among customers and punctuation experts”
It quoted the chairman of the Apostrophe Protection Society (which apparently actually exists) as saying “it’s just plain wrong”, missing a sitting duck opportunity for a funny typo.

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