At Ease with These Apostrophes

The following is a modified version of a post I made at the Criminal Brief mystery blog almost twenty years ago, griping about the improper use of a common mark of punctuation. Since I have recently observed that its misuse seems to be even worse now than it was then, I'm recycling that column here today. If any of you happen to remember that previous post, I am both proud of you and worried about you. Anyhow, here goes . . .

British author Lynne Truss said years ago that one of the things that prompted her to write the book Eats, Shoots, & Leaves was her sighting one day of a poster on the side of a city bus, announcing the Hugh Grant/Sandra Bullock movie Two Weeks Notice. The missing apostrophe was apparently more than Ms. Truss could bear. She decided, at that moment, to issue a wake-up call on how to use the King's English, and the result was one of the most delightful books on punctuation I've ever read.

Before I proceed, I have a confession to make. I wasn't fond of English in high school and college, and would rather have chugged a bottle of poison than diagram a sentence. Somewhere along the way, I saw the light. Now--whoodathunkit?--I actually enjoy studying things like word usage and sentence construction and punctuation. And, while my interest in that subject does not qualify me to be a grammar policeman and has certainly never led me (thank God) to try to write a style manual, I can at least understand why Ms. Truss became so annoyed by that movie poster. 

The issue here is not only mistakes with apostrophes. If you do happen to be a grammar policeman, you've probably also written lots of tickets for the misuse of semicolons. It sometimes seems that no one in the free world has any idea how to correctly use a semicolon. At least there aren't many semicolons running around out there, since periods or dashes can often step in and do the job for them--but apostrophes (and commas, the worst offenders of all) are everywhere. There are so many of them they can't be avoided.

Besides, apostrophes seem simple to use. Just stick one in before an s now and then, and maybe in the place of an omitted letter or letters, as in isn't or we're or he'll or shouldn't. But there's sometimes more to it than that. One problem is that they're often inserted where they don't belong. How many times have you seen a mailbox that says something like THE ANDERSON'S? I wouldn't argue that the box probably belongs to the Anderson family, but the sign on it should be a plural: THE ANDERSONS. No apostrophe. When I taught writing courses, I saw things like this in beginner's manuscripts all the time: "We asked the Cooper's over for dinner." The Cooper's what? Lawyer? Neighbor? Housekeeper?

It's bad enough when we do this in our own writing, but in her book Ms. Truss gives several examples of the public misuse of apostrophes. Why not let everybody know you slept through those high-school English classes? Here are some signs she mentions having seen: 

TROUSER'S REDUCED

APPLE'S. PEAR'S, CABBAGE'S, CARROT'S

BOBS' MOTORS

MENS COATS

OPEN SEVEN DAY'S AND WEEKEND'S

One was a sign in a park that said GIANT KID'S PLAYGROUND. The apostrophe indeed indicates a possessive, but it's misplaced. She says she wasn't at all surprised that the playground was empty: Everyone was scared of the giant kid.

An example from my own life is the name of a shopping center near the Crossgates subdivision, where I live. The sign in front of the group of shops says, in three-foot-high letters, CROSSGATE'S LANDING. I can only assume it's alerting us that someone named Crossgate will soon be approaching by air, since it makes no sense otherwise.

Writingwise, I should mention here that most editors's tolerance for apostrophe misuse runs low. Former MacAdam/Cage editor Pat Walsh says in 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published, "For the love of Pete, learn how to use an apostrophe. It is not hard and it is screwed up so often it is discouraging."

Granted, some of the rules on its use are a little vague. One involves the possessive apostrophe following a word already ending in an s. Although there are a few exceptions, Strunk and White say you should usually add another s after the apostrophe. (Indiana Jones's partner, Colonel Sanders's recipe, etc.) Other experts have said that final s should never be added. I've even read that you should not add the final s only if the word that follows it begins with an s. (Indiana Jones' sidekick, Colonel Sanders' secret recipe, etc.) So the question is, when do you obey some of these nitpicky rules and when do you ignore them and decide for yourself? My opinion is, so many authorities contradict each other on this particular matter, we're often safe to make our own decisions. When it looks right on paper and sounds right when spoken aloud, it'll probably work. But I do tend to add an s after an s' in most cases.

A comforting fact, according to Eats, Shoots, & Leaves, is that Beachcomber's Law of Conservation of Apostrophes states that a balance exists in nature. "For every apostrophe omitted from an it's, there is an extra one put into an its, thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant." By the way, its/it's is the one punctuation mistake you really and truly don't ever want to make, in a manuscript. It seems to defy the rules, since a possessive usually requires an apostrophe, and that's probably the reason this error shows up so much--but commit it at your own risk. To quote Lynne Truss one last time, "If you . . . persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best,' you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot, and buried in an unmarked grave.")

Anyway, that's my take, along with Ms. Truss's considerable assistance, on this pesky little mark of punctuation. What are some of your thoughts on apostrophes and their use/misuse? Please plug them in, in the comments section below. 

I wish I could say I saved the best for last, but I didn't--I'm closing with a piece of my own light verse:

Some writing errors

Give me fits--

Like who's for whose

And it's for its.

If that reaction

Seems excessive, 

Say "Contraction," 

Then "Possessive."

To get the two 

Confused ensures

The prose that's published

Won't be you'res. 

Or mine.

See you in two weeks.

Flash Fiction– Improv

It’s time once again for a touch of flash fiction.

It’s time once again for a touch of flash fiction.

I can’t accept full credit for the word play seeded by one of those chain emails that arrived via the internet, author unknown. I merely turned the idea into writing advice disguised as a short story. Read and enjoy.

---

 

Room for Improvement by Leigh (and Anonymous) During a domestic discussion, my wife said, “I can describe you in six words.” She went on to say I’m mature, I’m moral, I’m modest, I’m proper, I’m polite, and I’m perfect! I love my wife, shes the greatest. “Anything else?” I asked. “You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of apostrophes.”

So what?

Following up on something Michael Bracken said recently, editors see lots of things that they hate having to fix. Me too! So, I'm going to address a little thing to keep in mind while you're polishing your work.

Do you put a comma before the word "so" in the middle of a sentence if it is separating two independent clauses? We've all learned that "so" is a conjunction, so some people apparently think the answer is always yes, you do. But that is wrong! Whether you put a comma before "so" depends on whether the word "that" is implied after it. 

The rule  

If "that" is not implied after the word "so": put a comma before it.

If "that" is implied after the word "so": don't put a comma before it.

Examples (I love examples):

• I am having surgery on Thursday (this past Thursday as you read this), so I am writing my blog post in advance. 

I used a comma before "so" in the prior sentence because "that" wasn't implied after "so." Try to read the sentence with the word "that" after "so," and it won't make sense.

In contrast:

• I am having surgery on Thursday so I don't scream anymore when I stand up and sit down. 

The word "that" was implied after "so." Therefore, I didn't use a comma before "so."

Wrapping up

There you go. Short and sweet. Sometimes you just need one good tip.

Note: Because of the surgery, I probably won't be around today to respond to comments, so let me just say (see what I did there?), thanks in advance for your feedback.

Supreme Grammar

  As I've mentioned previously, my employed hours are spent in the criminal courts of Texas. Consequently, I normally don't invest much time thinking about Supreme Court cases on topics outside of criminal law. That becomes apparent every time someone asks me a question about copyright or wills or contracts. 

    This past April, however, the Supremes handed down an opinion that I stumbled into while looking for something else, Facebook v. Duguid. The background of the case follows: As a security precaution, Facebook sends an automated text alert when a user logs in from a strange device. Duguid apparently had a recycled phone number of a Facebook user. He got alerts from Facebook even though he had never created a FB account. Duguid sued, claiming that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 protected his privacy from this invasion. The act was written to prevent robocalls. (Who couldn't possibly be riveted by a case interpreting the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991?)

    The case turned on the sentence within the act defining what the statute meant by an "autodialer." Spoiler alert--Facebook's notification was held not to be a statutorily prohibited "autodialer." As defined by the TCPA, an "automatic telephone dialing system" is a piece of equipment with the capacity both "to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator," and "dial those numbers." 

    What I found fascinating was not the outcome but rather the discussion. The nine justices focused on whether the clause following the comma "using a random or sequential number generator" modifies both verbs "store" and "produce" or just the one closest to it. The opinion is an argument about the significance of the comma. 

    Justice Sotomayor offered up the Series-Qualifier Canon of statutory interpretation. She argued that under this "conventional rule of grammar, "[w]hen there is a straightforward, parallel construction that involves all nouns or verbs in a series," a modifier at the end of the list "normally applies to the entire series." She used commonplace sentences to illustrate the interpretation. 

    "Imagine if a teacher announced that "students must not complete or check any homework to be turned in for a grade, using online homework-help websites." It would be strange to read that rule as prohibiting students from completing homework altogether, with or without online support."

    Justice Alito agreed with the outcome of the case. He wrote a separate opinion, however, to criticize the reliance on the Series-Qualifier Canon. He threw down his own sentences to support a contrary position, including a Biblical quotation.

    "He went forth and wept bitterly [Matthew 26:75] does not suggest that he went forth bitterly."

    Justice Alito does not put forward a different interpretive canon, he argues that these are guidelines and are not ironclad. Interpretive canons are helpful in understanding language, but they are not to be applied as rigid rules. 

    This is the Supreme Court having a bare-knuckle brawl about commas and reading English. 

    Rest easy, the nation's brightest legal minds have resolved the burning question of an auto-dialer. Be forewarned, however, in the future, other words will surely come up for interpretation.

 

    To this point, Justice Alito suggests a data-driven approach to grammar rules, word usage, and definitions.

    "The strength and validity of an interpretive canon is an empirical question, and perhaps someday it will be possible to evaluate these canons by conducting what is called a corpus linguistics analysis, that is, analysis of how particular combinations of words are used in a vast database of English prose."

Jebulon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 In the future, therefore, we might crowdsource law. Corpus linguistics employs language usage databases to answer legal questions. When judges are called upon to interpret a word, they often begin with the question of 'what it means to the public?' To answer this, they might Google the word or look it up in a dictionary. Corpus linguistics seeks to systematize the approach. 

    (I've read short stories that put AI in the courtroom, usually as a substitute for juries. Here is a not-too-distant alternative use for AI.)

    If, for instance, a judge wanted to discern the meaning of "to keep and bear arms" and she wanted to know what the zeitgeist of colonial America was regarding firearms, she might look to the Corpus of Founding Era American English. Brigham Young University released the database with nearly 100,000 texts from the period beginning with the start of the reign of George III and ending with the death of George Washington. From a variety of texts, she could read how the words were employed. 

    Depending on her judicial philosophy, the original intent of the framers may not be the judge's desire as the tool for interpreting words and phrases. Consider this example: When the Earl of Sandwich wanted a bit of food that he might eat while gambling, the "sandwich" became meat between bread. That's what period literature would describe. An Originalist, therefore, would not include PB & J in the definition of a sandwich. As times change, our words, and language do also. (I thank Slate for this example 4/8/21) The scope of the applied corpus might also bake in race and gender notions no longer appropriate. 

    Corpus linguistics may be a great beginning to legal interpretation. (Much like the dictionary definition would be a great start.) The problem in a data-driven world is that judges might easily let quantitative analysis become the end rather than the start of the examination. 

    Few reading the post will ever engage in much statutory interpretation. What then might be the take-home point? Your commas matter. And, the story you write today may become part of the corpus, the database, that the computers of tomorrow's lawyers draw from. Choose your words carefully. 

    Until next time.

    

A Semifinal Word on Semicolons

 

Semicolonoscopy [sim-i-co-lun-OS-cah-pee] – An examination to detect abnormalities in the use of a certain mark of punctuation.

A popular topic recently at one of the writers' forums (fori?) was semicolons--their use, their overuse, etc. Should fiction writers even include them at all? 

I think it's interesting that some of my writer friends are banner-waving fans of semicolons, while others say they should be used occasionally but sparingly, and still others avoid them like Kryptonite. And that last group seems to be growing. Many talented writers feel that semicolons should never be used because a period can always do a better job. Kurt Vonnegut once said, of semicolons, "All they do is show you've been to college"--and in her Huffpost US article "Semicolons: How to Use Them and Why You Should," Claire Fallon said, "The semicolon has come to be seen as the gall bladder of punctuation marks: It theoretically serves some sort of purpose, but if it were removed entirely, everything would probably be fine."

My opinion, for what (little) it's worth . . .

I think semicolons, troublesome as they are, should remain a part of your writer's toolbox. Even if you're a fiction writer. But I also think they should be stored in one of the back compartments, along with exclamation points, and I agree that their overuse can make you an embarrassment to friends and family.

So when and why, if ever, should you use a semicolon? I can think of only three reasons, the first two of which are good ones.

1. Use a semicolon to separate phrases in a list that contains commas.

Example: Our Zoom session included writers from Athens, Georgia; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Ruston, Louisiana.

2. Use a semicolon when two complete sentences are too closely related to be separated by a period. And some of them are. (To paraphrase something I saw at the blog Legible awhile back, "A period says, 'Full stop. New idea.' A semicolon says, 'Pause; related idea.'")

Example: "The editor says she loves short stores; they're addictive."

Sure, you could use a period instead--but here I think it would provide too much separation, and too much of a pause.

3. Use a semicolon before a connecting word like therefore, otherwise, instead, or however.

Example: I might as well write this column; otherwise, I'd have to mow the lawn.

I can't recall ever using a semicolon this third way, just as I wouldn't use one before a conjunction like and or but, which is also acceptable in certain situations. I would just reword the sentence to avoid needing the semicolon.

A recent example of semicolonization

Here's something that came up just last week, in a mystery story I finished writing yesterday. The following is a paragraph near the beginning of the story:

The old woman was inching toward him through the trees and undergrowth along the creekbank, her back stooped and her eyes on the water. On her head was a blue baseball cap with a gray ponytail sticking out the hole in the back; in her hands was a pump shotgun. Just as Jabbo was trying to decide whether to hide or run, she raised her head and looked straight at him.

As you can see, I chose (after some hemming and hawing) to use a semicolon in that middle sentence. I realize a period could've been used, but--again--I thought there was too close a connection there, and that a period would've created too much of a "pause." A semicolon just felt right, and gave not just the sentence but the whole paragraph the rhythm I thought it needed. Feel free to disagree. (Hey, I haven't sent the story anyplace yet, so if enough folks do disagree, I might throw pride out the window and change it.)

A disadvantage for fiction writers

I think one of the semicolon's biggest problems is that it can make your writing appear too formal. If you're going for formal, fine, but most of my fiction writing is informal, and the last thing I want to do is have it look stiff or stilted. I certainly don't like to use more than one semicolon every couple of pages. And I never use a semicolon in dialogue. When I see that in my reading, it snaps me out of the story. It just doesn't look or feel right. 

A quick example, here. I just finished re-reading William Goldman's The Princess Bride, and at one point Buttercup's father sees something through the window and says to her mother, "Look!" Irritated and busy with something else, the mother replies, "You look; you know how."

I understand that it's an ideal place for a semicolon, because (as I keep saying) those are two complete sentences too closely related to be separated by a period. To say "You look. You know how." sounds clunky to me, and risks losing the scolding snippiness of the reply. And even though a grammatically incorrect comma sometimes works for this kind of thing (especially in dialogue), I don't think it would, here. The reply "You look, you know how." doesn't feel right, and might even be misunderstood. So the semicolon works. But . . . if I were writing something like that today, instead of fifty years ago when Goldman wrote it, I think I might substitute an em-dash, which it's hard to misuse anyhow. The result would be "You look--you know how." Which might solve the impression-of-formality problem.

The result of that particular semicolonoscopy is obviously a matter of opinion. I'm not even sure about it my ownself. John Sandford, one of my favorite authors, has used a lot of semicolons in dialogue in his Lucas Davenport novels, and colons too, but--for some reason--they don't seem to bother me. (Hey, if you're good enough at what you do, you can get away with a lot.)

The road to Damascus

When I started writing fiction for publication 26 years ago (boy does the time fly) I was guilty of using far too many semicolons, and commas too. I thought there was no end to the clarification those marks of punctuation could provide. I can still get carried away with commas at times, but otherwise I have (hallelujah) seen the light. I've cut way back on semicolons, and exclamation points as well. I probably still use too many dashes and too many parentheses, but we all have our vices. I think one reason I enjoy using dashes and parentheses is that I like to interject "asides" into sentences, when I write and when I speak. But that's another matter, and a discussion for another day.

Sometimes my use of semicolons depends on the project. One of my writer friends for whom I have great respect is also an occasional editor of anthologies, and he's not fond of semicolons. So when I submit a story to him, I make sure there are no semicolons to be found. It's not hard. As I mentioned earlier, the way to avoid or remove semicolons is to construct or reword sentences such that they're just not required.

What's your opinion? Use them whenever you like? Use them in moderation? Weed them out entirely?

In summary …

I plan to continue to use semicolons, annoying or not, when I feel they're needed. I'll treat them like bacon, or Hostess Twinkies, or real ice cream--they're not part of my regular diet, but now and then they just hit the spot.

I'll close on a profoundly serious note, with something from my latest effort, a book of 300 short poems called Lighten Up a Little:

THE BOOK DOCTOR

When edited, writers have said

Semicolons are something they dread;

What if someone had stolen 

One half of your colon

And plugged in a comma instead?

Sounds painful, right?

See you in two weeks.

Copyediting tips

A lot of editors wear one hat or another. They do developmental editing or copyediting. Not both. But not me. While I prefer developmental work, I also happily do copyediting. Helping make a manuscript consistent appeals to the anal-retentive side of my personality. (And while we're on it, yes, I know, that looks wrong: copyediting. It should be copy editing, don't you think? But the Chicago Manual of Style is what most (all?) publishers rely upon for fiction, and Chicago says to use copyediting and copyeditor. So I will here, even as I shiver while doing it.

Anyway ... it's late and I'm short on time tonight, so I'm going to quickly talk about two copyediting problems I spot all the time, not just in fiction, but on blogs and Facebook and, basically, everywhere. Both issues deal with when it's appropriate to set words or word phrases off by commas.

You think you know the answer? Let's see. I'm going to post some example sentences and you decide which ones are properly punctuated.

Example 1

A) My short story "The Case of the Missing Pot Roast" was published in 2018.
OR
B) My short story, "The Case of the Missing Pot Roast," was published in 2018.

Example 2

A) My newest short story "Alex's Choice" was published in Crime Travel.
OR
B) My newest short story, "Alex's Choice," was published in Crime Travel.

So what do you think? In each example, was (A) or (B) correctly punctuated? Based on a mistake I see often, I'll bet most of you (including you writers out there) said (B) for both. And I say to that ...

Buzz!

You lose that round. In Example 1, the correct answer is (A). But in Example 2, the correct answer is (B). Why? It all has to do with whether the story titles are necessary for the sentence to be clear.

A pot roast dinner because ... why not?

You set a story title (or any information) off with commas when that information is not necessary for the sentence to be clear. So let's look at Example 1. If I wrote it without the story title it would say: My short story was published in 2018. That would probably leave you thinking, "Which story are you talking about? You've had a lot of stories published. You even had more than one published in 2018." And you would be right, which is why you need to know the story title for that sentence to be clear. Since the story title is required, you don't set it off with commas. So the correct punctuation for the sentence in Example 1 is: My short story "The Case of the Missing Pot Roast" was published in 2018.

Turning to Example 2, here's how it would read without the story title: My newest story was published in Crime Travel. Assuming again that you're familiar with my work, do you need the story title to know what story I'm talking about? Nope. I only have one newest story, so I don't need to say its name for you to know which story I'm talking about. Since the story title isn't necessary in that sentence, if I were to add it, the title should be set off with commas, as such: My newest story, "Alex's Choice," was published in Crime Travel.

Think you've got it? Let's try again.

Example 3:

It's 2006, and I call my sister and say, "My short story was nominated for an award." She would congratulate me and know exactly which story I'm talking about because at that time I only had one story published. As such, if I'd included the story title in the sentence, it would have been  unnecessary detail, so it would have been set off by commas: My short story, "Murder at Sleuthfest," was nominated for an award.

But let's say I had two stories published in 2005. If I called my sister a few months later and said, "My short story was nominated for an award," she would ask, "Which one?" She can't tell which story I'm talking about because it could have been my first story published in 2005 or my second one. So I have to revise my sentence to make it clear: My short story "Murder at Sleuthfest" was nominated for an award. Since the story title is necessary for the sentence to be clear, it's not set off by commas.

Paul Rudd

Here's another example, just to be sure you've got it. Assume I'm not a bigamist and I'm married. Which is correct?

A) My husband Paul Rudd reads more than I do.
OR
B) My husband, Paul Rudd, reads more than I do.

If I had just one husband (and if I have to make one up, Paul Rudd is a good choice), his name would be set off by commas because you wouldn't need to know his name for this sentence to be clear. If I had simply said "My husband reads more than I do," you'd know I'm talking about Paul Rudd.

But what if I were a bigamist? Then if I said, "My husband reads more than I do," you would rightly say, "Which husband? Paul Rudd or Robert Downey Jr.?" (If I'm going to be a bigamist, I might as well do it right.) So for that sentence to be clear, I'd have to say: "My husband Paul Rudd reads more than I do." You'll notice there are no commas in that sentence because dear Paul's name was necessary for the sentence to be clear.

More Paul Rudd

Let's move on to something related: Which versus That. I see the word "which" used so often when the correct word in a particular situation is "that." When do you use "which" and when do you use "that"? If information is necessary to a sentence, you use "that" and no commas. If information is unnecessary to a sentence, you use "which" and commas.

Example:

I've just gone shopping and come home with one new blouse. I put it on and show it to my husband, Paul Rudd. (Set off by a comma because I'm no bigamist!) And he says, "Your new top is pretty." And I smile, pleased that he liked my new top. There was no confusion in our conversation. He could have said, "Your new top, which is blue, is pretty." But he didn't have to mention the color because I only bought one new top, so I know which top he's referring to. Since the color wasn't necessary for the sentence to be clear, the information was set off by commas and the word "which" was used.

You can never have
enough Paul Rudd

But what if I'd come home with two new blouses? I model both of them for Paul and say, "What do you think?" He replies, "Your new top is pretty." Instead of smiling, I say back, "Which one are you talking about? The red one or the blue one? You don't think they're both pretty? I spent hours looking for two tops I thought you would like, and you can't even bother to have a kind word for both of them, you son of a ..."

Oh, wait, sorry, back to grammar. So you see, Paul's declaration that my new top was pretty was ambiguous because I hadn't bought just one top. So I calmly ask Paul which one he's referring to, and he says, "Sorry, I should have been clear. Your new top that's blue is pretty. The red one's ugly as sin." Since the color blue was necessary for me to know which blouse he liked, the information was not set off by commas and the word "that" was used.

And now I'm off to therapy since I can't even have a happy marriage with an imaginary husband.

Punctured Punctuation

➊ Commencing today, Tribune Publishing (which includes our local Orlando Sentinel) and Hearst Magazines (consisting of Cosmopolitan, Elle, Car & Driver, Redbook, and Woman’s Day) initiate a program of ‘punctuation reduction’, both as a cost reduction measure and a nod toward modernization in recognition of “cell phone exigencies of post-Millennial Generation Z.”

Happy Easter!

➋ In addition, a number of Tronc (Tribune On-line Communications) properties such as The New York Daily News, tabloids and magazines (including a revitalized Newsweek), will begin experimental use of emojis (aka 😀 emoticons) in limited sections of their publications such as editorials, letters to the editor, and personal ads.

Background

Punctuation reduction is nothing new. On the 1^st of December 1896, The New-York Times removed its logo hyphen in a bid toward modernization, thus raising eyebrows among readers. Technically, a newspaper’s stylized heading is called a nameplate. Nameplate should not be confused with masthead, which contains owners’, editors’ and publishers’ names and disclosures.

Again, on the 21^st of February 1967, The Times removed its famed period (fullstop) from its nameplate. Often discussed in business courses, the newspaper gave two justifications. Once again it modernized the famous nameplate, and The Times’ finance department calculated it saved an inordinate gallonage of ink and a corresponding reduction in operating cost.

Hearst and Tribune plan to gradually reduce or even eliminate punctuation in ‘non-ambiguous contexts.’ The reduction will begin with Oxford commas, semicolons, double-quotes, and slowly advance, allowing older readers an opportunity to grow accustomed to the removal of punctuation at the end of paragraphs, much as occurs in present-day cell phone novels. Tribune publications expect to experiment with mid-paragraph sentence termination by using three spaces instead of periods. It is believed spaces combined with a following capitalized word will improve ‘literary flow’ and ‘rapidize comprehension’.

He Said, She Said

As reported a year and a half ago, the San Francisco Examiner, a Hearst publication, moved to add ‘non-binary’ gender pronouns in its reporting.

Historically, colleges have led the charge toward evolving language. The University of Michigan officially supports non-binary gender pronouns comprising such examples as ze, zie, zim, sir, miz, ve, ver, vis, ou, pers, and they (singular). ‘It’ (regarded fondly by fans of The Addams Family), once considered a potential pejorative, is becoming acceptable. (“The driver parked its truck.”)

Meanwhile, the disparaging word ‘woman’ knots the knickers in Mount Holyoke Women’s College:

Outside the US

‘Genderless’ pronouns, limited to the ‘American language’, aren’t expected to impact proper English spoken on other continents. Not so with punctuation reduction and emoticons. One need look no further than James Joyce, notably Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, 3684 words punctuated with two fullstops.

Likewise, Shakespeare himself seldom used periods, as seen in Hamlet’s monologue.

James Murdoch, son of publisher Rupert Murdoch, told the Sunday Times, “Amongst news producers and consumers, News Corp faces an existential crisis of credibility, not limited to The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, and– especially acute here in Britain– News of the World. Our former MySpace asset demonstrated demographics of age 25 or less attach greater believability to modern, minimalist communication. We’re eyeing emoticons (emojis), sentence simplification and eradication of superfluous punctuation as a means of engaging younger Generation X & Y readers. Within ten years, what remains of the reading public will find punctuation peculiar and outdated.” Murdoch added, “The British public has largely forgotten the NotW perceived misstep, and we may relaunch it on-line through social media.”

What To Expect

Adapting J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit from cell phone novel to the larger screen results in the following. We’ve taken the liberty of capitalizing proper names.

The Hobbit

Excitable little fellow said Gandalf as they sat down again   Gets funny queer fits but he is one of the best one of the best—as fierce as a dragon in a pinch
If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit even to Old Tooks greatgranduncle Bullroarer who was so HUGE for a hobbit that he could ride a horse   He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields and knocked their king Golfimbuls head clean off with a wooden club   it sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment

Editorials

We can only imagine how an emoji op-ed might appear.

Dear Editor, Sir! I’m irate, nay, outraged. 😤 Your incompetent investigative reporting of pet psychics exemplifies the worst in fake news. ☹️ Medium Sylvia Greene predicted my Eric 🐠 would die and sure enough, within two years it floated belly-up in its bowl. So there!!! 😝
— A Disappointed Reader 😖😡🤬

Agony Columns

Likewise, what might personal advice columns look like?

Dear Prunella, The 😍❤️ darling of my life packed up his family and moved to Alaska. 💔😫 He always dishes out silly excuses: I’m nuts, I’m scary, he’s not attracted, he’s happily married. 😒 Also, I didn’t use a real knife🔪, more like a cleaver. 👿 Would it violate my restraining order if I snip off my ankle bracelet and move to Fairbanks? 🤔
— Most Definitely Not a Stalker 😭

Happy holiday, everyone! 🐣🐥

I Learn Something New

In these postmodern times of information overload, I find it almost impossible to discover anything new under the sun because everything is moving so fast in cyberspace that I don’t have time to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. One part of my brain urges me to pause and read information on a webpage. Another part whispers, “Click that link and you just might discover exciting new information about a subject that interests you.” That is how I stopped and read about the new way young people are using the slash (/) in conversation and on the Internet.

The use of the slash dates back to ancient Rome. In the Middle Ages in Europe one / represented a comma, two // represented a dash, which evolved into the equals sign and was eventually simplified as a single dash (— ). In English prose, the slash is usually used as a conjunction. Of course, it is used in other ways too, such as in poems to show a line break. It also has many nonlinguistic uses.

As with many other punctuation marks in this cyberage, the slash is now used somewhat differently. I discovered the new use in the article, “The One Word In Everyone’s Texts/Conversations Right Now” by Sara Boboltz on the Huffington Post website. The slash, she says, is being used in texts, instant messages, emails, and face to face conversations. 

Boboltz links to the article “Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore” in The Chronicle of Higher Education of April 24, 2013, by Anne Curzan, professor of English at the University of Michigan. Professor Curzon requires the students in her history of English course to teach her two new slang words before class every day. In one class, a student mentioned “slash.” The slash is used as a conjunction, and slang doesn’t often create a conjunction. Instead of using the symbol /, the students used the word “slash” in their writings on Facebook, blogs, and Tweets as a conjunction. The students also used “slash” to mean “following up” and to indicate an after thought or topic shift.

It seems only the forward slash is currently used. I wonder how in the future the kids will use the backward slash. Maybe they’re already using it, and I just haven’t stumbled across an example. 

I imagine that at this very moment a graduate student is trying to earn his slash her degree studying the use of language on the Internet, and calling the study “netdialectology.” Maybe he slash she will come up with a name for this new way of speaking and writing that is evolving on the web. 

My candidates are netspeak, webspeak, cyberspeak, or nettalk, webtalk, cybertalk.

What are your thoughts on what we should call the language used on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites?

The Workhorse Punctuation Mark

When I began researching the colon, I expected to find, like the other punctuation marks, some controversy. I googled “punctuation marks colon” and got only about 30,000 hits (semicolon resulted in about 101,000 hits). The websites I visited defined the colon’s many uses and explained how to use it. I didn’t find any negative or positive articles about the little ubiquitous punctuation mark. To generate conversation don’t you need two opposing views, something to argue against? On the other hand, I could just provide information with the hope it may be useful.

The academic website of the Russia Federation says, “A colon informs the reader that what follows the mark proves, explains, or lists elements of what preceded the mark.” Since the information is in English, I assume it is aimed at students learning to write English. The site goes on to note that an Italian Scholar, Luca Serianni, “helped to define and develop the colon as a punctuation mark, identified four punctuational modes for it: syntactical-deductive, syntactical-descriptive, appositive, and segmental.” Serianni wrote the guide for the Italian language, but the rules are applicable to English as well as many other languages.

A definition wouldn’t feel right without something from that authoritative website, Wikipedia:

The colon is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line. A colon is used to explain or start an enumeration. A colon is also used with ratios, titles and subtitles of books, city and publisher in bibliographies, business letter salutation, hours and minutes, and formal letters.

More from Wikipedia: “Use of the : symbol to mark the discontinuity of a grammatical construction, or a pause of a length intermediate between that of a semicolon and that of a period, was introduced in English orthography around 1600.”

As usual, the Internet finds a way to use a punctuation mark in new ways. I turn again to the Russian academic website for an example: “A colon, or multiple colons, is sometimes used to denote an action or to emote, similarly to asterisks. In this use it has the inverse function of quotation marks, denoting actions where unmarked text is assumed to be dialogue. 

“For example: 

“Tom: Pluto is so small; it should not be considered a planet. It is tiny! Mark: Oh really? ::drops Pluto on Tom’s head:: Still think it’s small now?

“Colons may also be used for sounds, e.g. ::click::, though sounds can also be denoted by asterisks or other punctuation marks.

“Colons can also be used to represent eyes in emoticons.”

But the field that most interest me and, I think, you is English syntax. In this respect, it is used to introduce a logical consequence (syntactical-deductive); a description (syntactical-descriptive); an appositive independent clause; and the segmental i.e., introduction of speech (at one time, it did so for quotations without the marks).

I think I knew all these syntactical uses of the colon without really thinking about them. I certainly never thought about the “syntactical-deductive” or “syntactical-descriptive,” although I suspect I must have encountered the terms in one  or more of the many books on grammar I’ve read.

The colon is not neglected. It should be but is not praised for its versatility. It’s just there, always present, used without thinking, which means it’s probably occasionally misused. I probably misuse it more often than I misuse its cousin the semicolon.

In my next post, I shall return to detective stories. This punctuation stuff gives me a headache.

:)

Slow Death by Disuse

by Louis Willis

The main task of the semicolon is to mark a break that is stronger than a comma but not as final as a full stop. It’s used between two main clauses that balance each other and are too closely linked to be made into separate sentences. 

Oxford Dictionaries.

In his article “Has Modern Life Killed the Semicolon?” on the Slate website, Paul Collins relates a brief history of the semicolon:

       The semicolon has a remarkable lineage: Ancient Greeks used it as a question mark; and after classical scholar and master printer Aldus Manutius revived it in a 1494 set, semicolons slowly spread across Europe. Though London first saw semicolons appear in a 1568 chess guide, Shakespeare grew up in an era that still scarcely recognized them; some of his Folio typesetters in 1623, though, were clearly converts.  

Collins notes that the advent of the telegraph in 1850 might have “radically” changed language use because punctuation marks cost the same rate as words ($5.00). As far the semicolon, his perusal of “telegraph manuals reveals that Morse code is to the semicolon what weedkiller is to the dandelion.” He never quite says that in these modern times the Internet is killing the semicolon but strongly implies that it is. He believes, nevertheless, that “semicolons serve a unique function,...” but fails to say what that function is.

Matthew Kassel believes the semicolon isn’t dying but is “the perfect punctuation for the digital age.” In his "The Semicolon Is the Perfect Punctuation for the Digital Age" article on the New York Observer web site, Kassel argues “that the semicolon is...perfectly suitable for text messaging, instant messaging and online correspondence via Facebook and other social networks, where disparate ideas roam free and ‘unexpected juxtapositions’ are the norm.” He felt “compelled” to defend the semicolon because he “often uses semicolons in digital communication and [has] encountered some unexpected pushback.” Further, for him “the semicolon’s breezy informality… captures the unstructured, colloquial nature of digital correspondence more so than any other punctuation mark out there.” I didn’t find a whole lot of semicolons in his articles on the Observer site, and I couldn’t access his Twitter account, which was probably due to my unstructured, colloquial nature. 

The goal of communications on the social networks is to get the message out as quickly as possible and don’t bother about those little pesky things called punctuation marks. Way back in 1999, one writer, Amy Harmon, in an article "Internet Changes Language" published in the New York Times on February 20 noted that “Although judgments vary, what seems clear so far is that the Internet has propelled the traditionally deliberate pace of language evolution to higher speeds.” 

The semicolon doesn’t lend itself to the speed Twitter and Facebook requires because it insists on a brief pause to allow the reader to think. Readers who, like me, sometimes want, not just dip into an article, story, or essay, but to savor it, would, in these times of instant gratification, miss the semicolon. I have faith, though I don’t know if it is “the perfect punctuation for the Digital Age” as Kassel suggests, that its demise is not imminent. 

To you semicolon; may you live forever.