I live in an area that is filled with towns with long names like Mansfield Woodhouse and Kirkby-in-Ashfield... do you have any idea how  W I D E  the signs would become if we did away with the ' that shortens these idiotic names? Or how wide we would have to make the lanes at junctions for that matter?
We  a r e  an island you know, we don't have an expanse of wilderness to build into.

"There is no convenience arguments because it does not, in fact, take a high school diploma to read a sign with an apostrophe. Printing accurate signs does not make them unreadable to anyone not familiar with the grammar of apostrophes. FYI, apostrophe usage is elementary education, not secondary. Nor complicated."

Not everyone is a native English speaker...

Not forever. But for a fraction of a millisecond they will. Maybe even longer for those who aren't native english speakers or who have a reading disorder.
Its that lost time that is the problem.

See, its not a problem like "OMFG we are all going to die". Its a problem like "Hey, why dont we just leave this out...".

The symbol adds nothing to the information or directions given by the sign.

-

So i think the bigger question would be..."Why have punctuation on a sign?".

"The symbol adds nothing to the information [...] given by the sign."

Hey V (can I call you V?) I wonder if we could get a video of a child explaining what an apostrophe does?

Removing apostrophes is retarded.

It makes shit all difference whether a road is called "King's Road" or "Kings Road" but removing apostrophes from road signs sends out the wrong message to people that apostrophes don't matter. It also removes a bit of familiarity that children have with the apostrophe, which in turn leads to it being misused more and more in other places when it does matter!

In text the apostrophe denotes an awful lot of meaning for such a small little mark, it is important to defend it and keep people using it properly. Talking it of road signs isn't the cause of the problem of misused apostrophes but it certainly isn't helping.

On the subject of punctuation marks in signs, one of my favourite place names in the world is Westward Ho! The exclamation mark is part of the name! Anyone ever heard of it?

"then" is a reference to time. I am posting this THEN going up the road.

"than" is a comparison. I would prefer to keep posting THAN do what I have to do up the road.

I explained why the apostrophes should be there in the rest of my post. But you have also got it the wrong way around. The apostrophes were there but have been/are being taken away. What a stupid waste of time and money to replace signs so that the apostrophe is no longer there. I am not campaigning for all signs without apostrophes to be replaced with ones that do have them in, I am saying it is retarded to take them away when they are already there.