Editorial: Name change for Queen's Park - or is that Queens Park?

Queen's Park or Queens Park or Pukenamu Park or Pukenamu/Queen's Park. Photo / Bevan Conley

Whanganui District Council has approved a new name for Queen's Park as part of the finalisation of its 10-year plan.

It has chosen to call it Pukenamu Queen's Park to reflect its history.

The only problem with the new name was that the council struggled to get the old name correct.

The front cover of the agenda for Tuesday's statutory management committee meeting proclaimed: "Pukenamu/Queen's Park Reserve Management Plan."

Elsewhere on that front page was an agenda item about "Pukenamu Queens Park Reserve Management Plan".

The two plans may well be related.

Elsewhere in the document we have Queens Park and Queen's Park. So, was it one queen or several?

Okay, it is may be only the sort of thing a grumpy old newspaper sub-editor would notice, but surely the council - which has a track record of correcting mispellings - must know the right version of that lovely stretch of greenery and iconic buildings perched in the central city.

Well, not exactly. The two variations persist among council documents and it took a second opinion from the planning department to confirm that Queen's Park is, in fact ... Queen's Park.

What would esteemed Whanganui grammar vigilante Margi Keys make of all this - surely she would be aghast in a swirl of exclamation marks!

Having spent nights secretly correcting retailers' signs, adding missing apostrophes, she would have a field day going through council papers.

One recalls how Hawke's Bay has gradually been morphed into Hawkes Bay, and worries for our on regal apostrophe.

Let's stick with Queen's Park - Pukenamu Queen's Park.

Of course, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones ...

And so now we must admit punctuation in the Chronicle isn't always as exact as we would like.