BRIGG DISTRICT LIONS TO STAGE PENSIONERS' CONCERT

Brigg District Lions will be staging a pensioners' concert at Broughton Village Hall on Friday, August 7, from 7.30pm to 9.45pm.
In their poster, the Lions correctly employ the plural apostrophe, which set us thinking.
At Friday night's event in Brigg Buttercross about the proposed new signs for half-a-dozen of our Courtyards, there was a short discussion about the application of the apostrophe in Brigg.
Should we refer to Morley Yard or Morley's Yard?
Our view is it has always been known as Morley Yard. 
In centuries past the apostrophe was not employed in many cases - incorrectly so, it must be said.
Today, this form of punctuation is again dying a rapid death, due to the explosion of texting on mobile phones.
Folk can't be bothered to switch from ABC mode to select the full stop or apostrophe.
So the wheel is turning full circle again, as happens to the English language, which is always evolving and adapting.
It is by the people, for the people, as Abraham Lincoln so famously said. An American, it's true, but one using the English language.
The semi-colon has become virtually redundant, too. Yet it can be very useful in making long lists much easier to read.
During summers in the early 1980s, when we were reporting for the old Lincolnshire Times weekly newspaper at 57 Wrawby Street, our publication carried extensive reports of horticultural, agricultural and goat shows, plus school sports days.
Employing the semi-colon made lists of winners much more readable.
The same half-dozen growers seemed to win most of the classes at the various horticultural shows, including Brigg, Wrawby, Scawby, Barton and Barnetby.
Barnetby's is still going, but how many others have survived across Northern Lincolnshire?
Coun Dick Long, from Wrawby, who became leader of Brigg-based Glanford Borough Council, certainly knew his onions, and other varieties of vegetables, for which he won many, many prizes. He often appeared in Lincolnshire Times show reports.