My kingdom, such as it is, for an apostrophe

I've been writing this blog since June 2010, and have managed to get this far without writing an entry specifically about apostrophes. The time, however, has come. This news, while hardly surprising given the feebleness with which we seem to be giving up on grammar as a society, is nonetheless depressing. A company which sells books, for crying out loud, dropping an apostrophe which had correctly featured in its name since the firm's inception. If they can't see the paradox inherent in a book store chain doing such a thing, then they're clearly not being run by people with any vision.

Their MD's defence of the move is particularly mystifying. He claims it's now going to be a 'more versatile and practical' spelling in the digital world. What the hell? The last time I checked, the digital world had no particular problems in rendering apostrophes without any difficulty. That is, frankly, bollocks. If it's some pathetic effort to compete with Amazon and other online booksellers, it's going to make not a jot of difference.

And how is something that's less accurate 'more practical'? That's just nonsense. Why not just drop the first 't' as well? Maybe a couple of the vowels, there are way too many of them. Practical my arse. It's about making things easier – removing the need for any Waterstone's employee to actually have to make a decision about whether to include a bloody apostrophe or not. That way they can safely employ less literate people and pay them less. Or something. (As you can probably tell, I can't for the life of me see any good reason for the move.)

This may seem like a petty, pointless thing to complain about, and perhaps it is. But the way I see it, this is nothing less than a long-standing and esteemed seller of words, with all their inherent power and beauty, weakening those qualities by leading the charge toward a dumber and less literate society. It's thoroughly depressing and I'm sure I will not be the only Waterstone's regular who not only continues to spell their name with the oh-so-difficult character left intact, but also withdraws their custom from the wretched place unless or until they reconsider. If they suffer the exact opposite consequences to those they envision from this baffling, expensive and simply wrong decision, maybe they'll see sense and change their minds.