Harrods cast it aside in 1928, Selfridges followed 17 years later, but by then Gordon Selfridge was too busy having his way with twin showgirls The Dolly Sisters, than worry too much about what went over the door of his emporium. Currys have dispensed with its services and Starbucks, well they are American, never used it in the first place.

The apostrophe is going the same way as the double space after a full point, which was much loved by legal secretaries when using manual typewriters. If punctuation marks were endangered species, then the apostrophe would be some sort of rare Amazonian frog….