He was a British newspaperman who attracted a flurry of international attention when he founded and later disbanded the “Apostrophe Protection Society.”

John Richards, a self-styled bulwark against the “barbarians” laying waste to a humble yet essential element of the English language, has died in England.

Richards spent years as a copy editor fixing other reporters spelling and punctuation mistakes; people he called grammatical gadflies.  So, in 2001 he founded the Apostrophe Protection Society.

According to his son, Richards’ cause of death of sepsis.

John Richards was 97.