And if the offender is a judge, a furious note is passed expressing astonishment which I am admonished to share and if possible to express. The book is packed with information both on the peculiarities of Australian English and on a whole range of matters about which I was previously quite ignorant. There are, however, a few errors to which I feel duty bound to call attention. Doubtless they can be corrected before the second edition. More worrying is the use throughout the text of the apostrophe.
Apostrophes are truly troublesome beasts.
At the very moment in the history of our language where they seem to be disappearing from use as a signal of the possessive case, they have crept into this Guide in a wholly impermissible way. For a moment I thought that this was just a mistake which had failed to catch the proof-reader's eye. It's the conversational form in print. There is no excuse. There is much in the Cambridge Australian English Style Guide to delight, amuse, inform and intensely irritate every reader.