Chrissie Maher award 2015

The Chrissie Maher Award recognises a special, inspiring achievement in plain English.

Ammarah Mahmood

At nine years old Ammarah, a Year 5 pupil at Swain House Primary School in Bradford, is our youngest ever winner.

Ammarah wins for her impressive error-spotting during her school project. The project involved looking around the local shopping precinct to find mistakes on business signs.

Among the clangers Ammarah noticed were ‘No Drink’s Allowed in Shop’, ‘Customers for Taxi’s please wait here’, ‘Open Sunday’s’, ‘Banana’s’, and ‘We pay cash for DVD’s’.

Ammarah’s achievements were given plenty of attention by the local press. It’s clearly a fun story, but we felt that it was also potentially an important one.

I would like to thank Plain English Campaign for their recognition of Ammarah’s efforts and dedication to the use of good English grammar and punctuation. Both the school and myself are exceptionally proud of her.

Sarah Rothera, Ammarah’s teacher

Thank you very much for the award, I am very surprised that so many other people are shocked by the incorrect use of apostrophes, it’s bananas! (Not banana’s.)

Ammarah Mahmood

By recognising such an achievement with this award, we hope to encourage more schools to run similar campaigns, and we hope to inspire children to develop a passion for good grammar and English.