The genteel Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate is more often in the news as one of the happiest places in the UK to live. However, this past week it was at the centre of a teacup-sized storm about… punctuation! North Yorkshire council has announced all new street signs will use of phase the apostrophe from street names, mostly because they are difficult for online geographical databases to recognise.

It’s a move that “riles the blood” of local residents, which is of some comfort to this columnist, who also happens to be a teacher of English. But does it matter to most of you? Should we still care about spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG)?

“I gotta go toilet,” says one of my Croydon-based family members, grammatical gloop that less “riles the blood”, but more “boils the piss”. Is it snobbery to battle the misuse of language? Do we accept that........

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