I REALLY don’t know what to make of the self-styled “grammar vigilante” who stalks the street of Bristol under cover of darkness, removing misplaced apostrophes or adding missing apostrophes to shop signs.

The anonymous pedant’s campaign against the greengrocer’s apostrophe has hit the headlines (or headline’s, if you are the sort of person who makes the vigilante’s blood boil), with the mysterious figure being likened to the clandestine graffiti artist Banksy. Armed with his home-made “apostrophiser” on a stick, the grammar vigilante adds apostrophes where they are needed – in, for example, a sign for a gentlemen’s outfitters, and removes those which are superfluous, as in Cambridge Motor’s, a sign which the vigilante claimed had annoyed him for years.

Leaving aside entirely the issue of any possible criminal behaviour, I really must take the vigilante to task. For it is he who declares himself to be a “grammar vigilante”, as stated during an anonymous interview he gave to the BBC.

In fact, his campaign against errant and missing apostrophes makes him a punctuation vigilante, not a grammar vigilante; an easy mistake to make but one which someone so interested in the niceties and solecisms of our language should not be making.

I have a huge amount of sympathy for him in some ways, however. We upholders of high standards in grammar and punctuation appear to be an ever-diminishing number in society, as any brief trawl through people’s comments on social media will so depressingly display. If I had a pound for every person who who thinks disgusting is spelt “discusting”, I’d be sitting pretty (or “sat pretty”, as those who get their grammar wrong would have it); and if I see another Facebook post from someone who thinks “can’t” is spelt “carnt”, I’ll... I’ll... I’ll tut and roll my eyes.

The trouble is, unless you are in the position of being paid to correct people’s spelling, grammar and punctuation (as I, by happy coincidence, am), becoming a language vigilante really is a thankless task. In this day and age, it’s the ultimate Sisyphean labour, rolling a boulder - “forever, forever, with useless endeavour” - up a never-ending mountain.

For, as sure as eggs are egg’s in the world of the misplaced apostrophe, for every errant punctuation mark the vigilante corrects, six more are bound to sprout up somewhere else.

I don’t know any sign writers, but it does seem that far too few of them possess a good enough grasp of punctuation. Some scatter apostrophes around like confetti, chucking then randomly into signs on shops and vans, hoping some at least will land in the correct place.

We’ve all seen shops selling pie’s, sausage’s and banana’s (it is a common mistake to believe that words ending in vowels require an apostrophe in their plural form); I’ve even seen a sign for “Xma’s tree’s”, which is horrifically wrong on every level.

But if people don’t care enough about our wonderful language to ensure they’re using it correctly, who are we to show them the error of their ways? If their schooling has been so poor that they leave with no concept of what an apostrophe, semi-colon, comma etc is for, why should we do the job their teachers should have done, by correcting them?

Away from work, I wouldn’t dream of telling someone that they should have put an apostrophe in it’s when they use the word in its role as a contraction of “it is”. I’d have fewer friends than I do now if I informed some of them that definitely doesn’t have an a in it.

I was brought up believing that it’s rude to correct people or to point out bad manners or etiquette. Just as I wouldn’t presume to chastise someone for holding their knife like a pen or for calling a napkin a serviette, neither would I reply to an email by pointing out any grammatical or punctuation errors contained therein.

Even universities barely bother to correct students’ grammar and punctuation these days. Showing up a student to be deficient in their language skills is frowned upon as irrelevant and potentially upsetting for the poor little snowflakes, so tutors and lecturers largely ignore such mistakes. (These days, however, they are able to mark students down for using non-gender-neutral terms such as “manpower” or “forefathers” - and how utterly PC bonkers is that?)

No, much as I sympathise with the Bristol “grammar vigilante” and the years of torment he has clearly suffered at the hands of poorly-educated sign writers and business owners, I’m afraid I shan’t be tempted to stage my own pedant’s revolt.