Apr 27, 2021
By Andy Johnson
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.