While I was rambling around Charlotte Park this weekend, I strolled on down by the Cleeces Ferry boat ramp and took a picture of the boat ramp on the Bells Bend side. Then, yesterday, I was looking at old maps of the Bend and I was reminded of the most awesome nerdy fight I ever got into with someone behind the scenes here at Pith.
I got a lovely email telling me to stop putting an apostrophe in Bell's Bend, that it wasn't house style. OK, yes, it's more than house style, it's how everyone but me writes the name of the bend — but focus, people. I'm making a point for grammar and common sense. Anyway, I pointed to Cleeces Ferry and asked whether SouthComm really wanted to be responsible for helping propagate any more grammatical horrors like that.
For you see, no one named "Cleece" ever owned or ran the ferry between Bells Bend and Charlotte Park. It was owned by the Clee brothers. In proper English, it would have been the Clees' Ferry, but in the vernacular, of course, it was the Clees's ferry. If map makers and countless journalists would have just respected that it was a plural possessive and stuck the apostrophe in there, Clees from all over the land would say "Oh, hey, I wonder if those are our Clee brothers?"
But no.
Instead, people's fear of apostrophes has lead to "Cleeces Ferry."
