THERE’S SO MUCH BAD GRAMMAR AROUND THESE DAYS, WORDS FAIL ME.

The Bee Gees wrote a song called “Words” which contains the lines . . .

It’s only words

And words are all I have

To take your heart away.

It’s a great song, but as someone who works with words every day, I’ve always disliked the line, “It’s only words”. Not just because the correct line should be, ‘They’re only words’, but because it infers words aren’t that important. Which is daft, coming from songwriters!

Words are important and it irritates me that people spell and pronounce them incorrectly everywhere. Take the British TV newsreaders, reporters and presenters who talk about ‘Reee-search’. ‘Research’ is pronounced without any emphasis on the first syllable . . . unless you’re American.

And, despite my complaining about it in this very newspaper last year, more and more people interviewed on TV still begin their answers with the patronising, “So . . . ”, as if they’re talking to a dim child.

On the brighter side, I recently read about a Bristol man who’s dedicated his life to correcting bad grammar in public places. For 13 years, he’s been going around the city at night, using pieces of white sticky-backed plastic to cover-up incorrectly inserted apostrophes on signs outside shops and other businesses.

He also inserts apostrophes when they’ve been incorrectly omitted, carefully matching the colour of the shop sign so neatly that ‘You can’t see the join’. He carries a retractable platform that enables him to reach signs above street level and “The Apostrophiser” – his own invention for adding and covering up apostrophes.

Basically, it’s a broom handle with a sponge on the end. Although he’s been interviewed on TV and in the press, he’s not interested in being famous.

Apostrophes are his sole mission in life and I hope it doesn’t come to a full stop!

See what I did there?