The moment I saw the sign Principals Office in my son's school I knew the apostrophe was doomed. The correct English would have been Principal's Office, with an apostrophe indicating the office belonged to the principal or head of the school. Having an apostrophe in my name Noel O'Hare--frequently omitted--I have always felt rather attached to this misunderstood piece of punctuation. Apostrophe abuse, like drug abuse, can be found at every level of society, from the local school to the company boardroom. Shops and businesses are some of the worse offenders, omitting apostrophe as in 'the Razors Edge, men's hairdressing' (The Razors Edge is incorrect--it needs an apostrophe in Razor's , but men's hairdressing is correct). You'd think that bookshop would at least have some feeling for proper English usage, but even major chains such as Whitcoulls have abandoned the apostrophe. It's left to the American fastfood franchise McDonald's to set an example. Literacy is not something you expect to find in television. Despite the responsibility of serving a mass audience, television graphics writers appear never to have mastered the difference between 'its' and 'it's', and other apostrophes are often misplaced or omitted. The misuse sometimes leads to wholesale plagiarism. Poor Charles Dickens television versions of his novels are often passed off as 'Charles Dicken's' works. The widespread misuse of the apostrophe is, the argument goes, impoverishing the language by reducing clarity. If I omit the apostrophe from a phrase such as 'my friends house' it is impossible to tell whether I mean one friend or several ( though it may often be clear from the context). In correct usage, 'my friend's house' would mean the house of one friend 'my friends' house' would mean a house where several friends lived. On the other hand, the gross misuse of the apostrophe in a sentence such as 'Its you're birthday' does nothing to diminish the meaning (the correct usage would be 'It's (It is) your birthday' ). English teachers, though, no longer take a hard line on the use of apostrophes. Richard Hogg, professor of English at Manchester University and editor of The Cambridge History of the English Language, recently made news when he revealed that 'he would not go to the stake' to maintain the difference between 'it's' and 'its'. The apostrophe, he suggested, is fast becoming redundant. Laurie Bauer, researcher in linguistics at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and a keen apostrophe watcher, agrees that the apostrophe is dying in its present form. and that its misuse is not a major linguistic crime. 'There are some (misuses) that don't matter and some that may not matter. The number of times where you're actually going to be confused between 'I'll' and 'Ill' is actually small.' There is greater ambiguity, for instance, between the present tense and past tense of the verb 'read'. 'Sometimes that can be very con- fusing,' says Bauer, 'but people don't complain, because it's well established.' It's easy for the likes of Bauer to be blase about the decline of the apostrophe--she doesn't have an apostrophe in her name, as I do. Personally, I think this linguistic slovenliness is clear evidence the country is going to the dog's. Which of the following is the correct form. of the name of the business discussed in Para- graph 1 ?