May I take a moment to apostrophise the apostrophe, which finds itself suddenly de trop in a "digital world of URLs and email addresses". Waterstone's yesterday suffered a loss of character to become plain old Waterstones because – according to the managing director, James Daunt – these days a spelling without the apostrophe is "more versatile and practical".
With the challenges facing high-street booksellers more, erm, daunting than ever, you might think that changing to a spelling which "reflects an altogether truer picture of our business today", or reverting to "a font that reflects authority and confidence", is something of a distraction. The Apostrophe Society is up in arms, describing it as "plain wrong", and lamenting that a bookshop should be so "slapdash".
Daunt certainly seems a little grammatically confused when he argues that the new name reflects the "continued contribution of thousands of individual booksellers" – anyone for Waterstones'? – but the loss of this apostrophe does signify some sort of shift in ownership. After being cut out of the deal which installed Daunt as managing director last year, Tim Waterstone now finds himself downgraded to sit with the Boots, Clarks and Selfridges of this world. Can't wait for his next novel ...
