How funny to find the apostrophe described as a ‘notoriously difficult punctuation mark’ in last week’s Letters. It’s simple. So, the simple reason that St Thomas’s Hospital should be spelt with the final s is that it is pronounced by everybody as tom-ass-is, and the spelling must reflect that.
I agree that Earl’s Court is, as the Underground philosopher Anne Wotana Kaye suggests (Letters, 14 June), a deeper problem, for historical reasons. The station bears an apostrophe, whereas Barons Court does not. (Perhaps Dublin should build an Underground so that it could have a station called Finnegans Wake, like Joyce’s novel, but unlike the fully apostrophed name of the song.) Above ground the quaint settlement in London SW5 generally lacks the apostrophe. The exhibition centre says EARLS COURT in vast letters. The Earl’s Court Road has one, but not in the A–Z. There was in the 19th century an Earl’s Court Farm, after the original earl with his manor thereabouts.
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