Wake up, kiddies. Time to open your parens (short for parentheses in the publishing world) under the punctuation tree. But remember, this day, some of Brohaugh’s important punctuation rules:
Use exclamation points sparingly. As I’ve often said, two exclamation points side by side resemble the crutches that they are.
Always jam a hyphen into the anal-retentive. As I’ve mentioned before, the slogan “There is a hyphen in anal-retentive” (which persnickitors know well, as many of them walk as if the hyphen is firmly placed in personal regions) is available on T-shirts and other paraphernalia at nationalpunctuationday.com.
Ignore persnickitors who demand elliptical adherence to the rule that ellipses are used only to indicate deleted words. Punctuation began as a timing device . . . cheer the beauty of ellipses as a timing element, particularly when you want a sentence to trail off with an unstated implication . . .
Adhere to the rule that “Apostrophe use must be organic.” The technical use of the apostrophe is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “The aggregation of protoplasm and chlorophyll-grains on the cell-walls adjacent to other cells, as opposed to epistrophe when they collect on the free cell-walls.” So when a persnickitor screams about it’s as a possessive, just open to the biggest dictionary in the world and point to this page that . . . oh, sorry, I was looking at the wrong page.
Remember that colons are poorly stacked ellipses. The third spilled ellipsis rolled around until it stopped, and became a period. None of this is true and has nothing to do with punctuation, but the idea is fun to remember, anyway.
Use quotation to, um, quote. Quotation marks quote and quotation marks mock in varying degrees. Quotation marks do not shout.
Ponder upon the fact that slash marks are technically known as “virgules.” People who point this out are technically known as “language geeks.” (Doesn’t a virgule sound like an evil supernatural creature in a Laurell Hamilton novel? They could be supernatural slashers! . . . )
Always punctuate National Punctuation Day with a ® symbol. Cuz.
Never start a sentence with a comma. Except for sometimes.
The economy being what it is, retailers across the country are breaking out the holiday-themed merchandise ever earlier. Halloween displays went up around St. Patrick’s Day, Back-to-School displays went up three weeks before graduation day, and I believe I just saw the first display for Christmas of 2009. Or so it seems.
But, alas, you’re probably behind on your shopping for National Punctuation Day, right around the corner on Sept. 24th. Not me. I’ve already erected my punctuation tree. I have to admit to using a dollar sign ($) instead of the traditional whatchamacallit-A (Å) for my tree. Yes, the tree I use is artificial, but it’s so much easier to erect and store than the natural trees, and either way, the most important moment is topping the tree with that little star (which all you Punctuation Day carolers know from “O Aster Isk of Bethlehem”). I’ve decorated the front of the house with strings of comma lights (my wife claims that they are actually BBQ-themed lights in the shape of red peppers, but I think she has an overactive imagination). Oh, and the ampersands are hung o’er the fireplace with care in hopes that Santubordinate Clause soon will be there.
This National Punctuation Day, I’m hoping to find a special T-shirt under the punctuation tree. It says “Is there a hyphen in anal-retentive?”, and unlike my silliness above, that very T-shirt exists. It’s one of several fun products from the official National Punctuation Day web site. Such slogans are available on greeting cards, posters and “latte mugs” in addition to T-shirts. Delight your beloved anal-retentive persnickitors with such a goodie on Punctuation Day morning or Punctuation Day eve, depending on your individual traditions.
However, beware that Punctuation Day celebrants sometimes have vastly different belief systems. More on that anon, as we approach the big day, baking our period-shaped Punctuation Day cookies and popping popcorn for the tree’s ellipses garlands….
I had agreed to have dinner with friends the other night, but Doc begged off because of family commitments, Jim begged off because the voices told him to, and I begged off because Jim’s voices told me to. Or, rather, I found myself irrationally busy. All this despite the fact that the dinner had been planned for months, with the obligatory stern instruction, “Mark your calendar.”
Fellow snarker JohnnyB—just about the only one of the group able to honor the commitment—chastised us thusly:
Just read this in Everything You Know About English Is Wrong:
The phrase “mark your calendar” does not mean “write this event in on your calendar so you won’t schedule something else in that same time period.”
“Mark your calendar” is a bastardization, by bastards, of a Latin term “mar curcalen dare” meaning “I challenge you to swirl around in the sea,” which means nothing.
As does my commitment to dinner engagements, apparently. And as does today’s post, here just for the fun of it.
With the ‘08 Presidential campaign flaring up . . . um, heating up, Everything You Know About English Is Wrong nominates a candidate with increasing, undeniable presence:
Posted in humor, neology at 7:38 am by Bill Brohaugh
As one who instructs in the craft of writing, I aspire to having something educational or informational or opinionational in each post—and lacking any of that, I try to make up new words, like opinionational.
Since I’m lacking the educational and informational today, I simply offer this little gem, “The Onion: Congress Debates Merits Of New Catchphrase.”
I recall, in slightly fictionalized fashion, a book reviewer chastising a particular anal book of prescriptivistic grammar (”Split that infinitive and die, mongrel dog!”—though that’s perhaps being unfair in the mildness of my paraphrase). The reviewer’s complaint was that said prescriptivist had failed at his own stated level of prescriptivism in using an unaccented E in cliche. The dullard! Without the accent, we’d all be pronouncing it “clitch!” Or some such nonsense that I’m exaggerating. Maybe. This incident seemed to me to be something of the wits chucking nits at each other in wit-nitted battle.
In general, English is strongly accepting of original spelling of its adopted loanwords: rendezvous is my typical example. English isn’t so quick to retain unusual characters like the cedilla (in françois, literally and by way of illustration), the tilde (not your great aunt’s middle name, but the swoopy symbol in mañana and the target of a Nike swoop-infringement suit), or the umlaut (the two dots orbiting the proper name Schröder like Deimos and Phobos, but not like Deimös and Phöbös).
Abandoning such non-English conventions is just fine with me, as I’m a strong believer in the fact that we don’t speak non-English when speaking English—and that applies to the written version, as well. So when the persnickitors (including the automated persnickitor in Microsoft Word) start harrumphing that cliche is a misspelling, I return the harrumph. Is that naive of me?, I ask as I see the persnickitors twitch. You’re not naive! You’re naïve!
Well, maybe I’m both, but I’m also aware of not only the lack of necessity but also the problems of trying to cling to what is for us unusual character sets. Quick, run to your typewriter and find the two-dots-above-the-I key. Not right in front of you? Not in front of me, and in fact I had to turn to a special text-editing program to get access to ANSI character 239(EF). Intuitive, eh?
And then there’s this I spotted on the web:
Depending on HTML code and web browsers to properly interpret some of these character sets is neither naive nor naïve—it is ny-eeeee! I find juvenile pleasure in knowing that the symbol signals “phonological diaeresis.”
Equally quickly, without looking, which way do the accents go on the noun resume: résumè, rèsumé, rësumê, rèçumæ?
I’m certainly not the first writer to campaign for dispensing with foreign characters. Here’s Woody Allen, tongue-in-cheek, of course, in a piece called “Lovborg’s Women Considered” in Without Feathers:
Born in Stockholm in 1836, Lovborg (originally Lövborg, until, in later years, he removed the two dots from above the o and placed them over his eyebrows) began writing plays at the age of fourteen.
There are other good uses for such now-obsolute typographical gymnastics. Here’s Steve Martin, following the lead of the fictional Mr. Lovborg, writing about a supposed shortage of typographical periods in the font style known as Times Roman:
“Most vulnerable are writers who work in short, choppy sentences,” said a spokesperson for Times Roman, who continued, “We are trying to remedy the situation and have suggested alternatives, like umlauts, since we have plenty of umlauts—and, in fact, have more umlauts than we could possibly use in a lifetime! Don’t forget, umlauts can really spice up a page with their delicate symmetry—resting often midway in a word, letters spilling on either side—and not only indicate the pronunciation of a word but also contribute to a writer’s greater glory because they’re fancy, not to mention that they even look like periods, indeed, are indistinguishable from periods, and will lead casual readers to believe that the article actually contains periods!”
My 6/23/08 tribute to George Carlin was one of several billion tributes posted almost instantly after news of his death began to spread. Likely all but a handful of those gabillion posts mentioned Carlin’s classic “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine. I, too, mentioned that particular monologue, though within the context of time frame (my meeting him was three years after the arrest for live performance of said monologue) and, more importantly, as contrast with his perceptive analysis of something as specific as a single number—inconsequentional in relation to the world at large, but vastly significant in relation to the comedy of Mr. Carlin.
The googolzillion oh-so-facile references to the Seven Words, the Supreme Court ruling, the etc. etc. etc., particularly from the traditional media perhaps in earnest homage to Carlin but more likely in attempt to give us a touch point to make sure we knew who the heck they were talking about, were not unjustified. Yet, such references distract us from Carlin’s powerful inspection of the microscopy of our lives, the detailed moments that define us as humans, and the fact that we created this world and are not simply victims of it. As I said, a single number, and why we think a hundred and faahve is funny. Extend that back to his lightning-rod routine: Who banned the Seven Words? Not “they.” We did. Carlin showed that we must understand ourselves, and rise above ourselves. And, sometimes, we must simply be happy with ourselves. Multiple messages? No, just perceptive observation of multiple humanly self-conflicted traits. And that’s where his genius resided.
Most commentators note that Carlin eloquently and perceptively observed words. More important, Carlin used eloquent words to reveal perception. Yeah, the Seven Words are a definite moment in his career, but they are not a defining moment. Don’t insult him by seeing him through only that filter.
Amongst the billions of tributes out on the web right now, I particularly like this to-the-point musing, from one Thom363:
I had the honor of meeting Carlin in 1975, as part of a small group of student journalists interviewing him after a show in Madison, Wisconsin—physical miles and philosophical eons away from Milwaukee, where he was arrested after a 1972 show. The charge: disturbing the peace, because he had uttered the seven words you can’t say on television.
In that ‘75 group interview, Carlin was relaxed and reflective, talking the craft of comedy . . . and the craft of words. He said something in that interview that I’ve quoted dozens of times in the near dozens of years since that interview: “The funniest number of all is 105.” Then he repeated it, stretching it: “A hundred and faahve.” He paused. Perfect timing. “It takes a long time to go through all the others to prove it to you.”
I wrote up that quote as a humorous brief that I submitted as part of my 1976 job interview with Writer’s Digest magazine. I didn’t get that specific job, but I did well enough to be recommended for another spot at the company, and years later became the editor of the Digest. I like to believe that my love of words was instrumental in landing that position; I suspect that relying on Carlin’s wit and perspective communicated that love better than I did myself. Thanks for speaking so well, George.
I find it sadly ironic that the web page displaying the story that told me of his death had two “Related Video” links. One was headlined in words Carlin would have cheered: “Comedian George Carlin dead at age 71.” Right below it, a second link labeled “Comedian George Carlin Passes Away at 71.” Carlin railed against such empty, soft language as “passes away,” and the headline writer has insulted Carlin’s work by using not only the sort of dodge words but also specific dodge words Carlin attacked. Enjoy one of his tart diatribes against euphemisms—including, yes, “pass away”—at YouTube.
I doubt that I’ll be the only person to say this, or even the first. But when I heard this morning that Carlin had died, I uttered a couple of those words you can’t say on television.
Everything You Know About English Is Wrong is dedicated to Gary Burbank, a long-time radio personality who had the strange, inexplicable tendency to buy my freelance material for around a quarter of a century during his successful tenure in Cincinnati. The other writers (including several also mentioned in the dedication) and I called our bits and skit comedy “audio political cartoons.” Gary won two national Marconi awards—the radio version of the Oscars, and I was honored that he used my contributions so regularly. Plus, he ran a restaurant (a barbecue restaurant, no less), and the occasional free meal didn’t hurt my self-esteem any.
Gary recently from retired his daily 3-hour radio gig, but you can still hear his nationally syndicated Earl Pitts character—list of stations here.
Cincinnati public television station WCET recently ran a four-part series of interviews with Gary. They present a great look at radio history, plus you get some great tales, including the time Gary was hitch-hiking, and was picked up by one Elvis Presley. This was not last week, by the way. Check out the interviews here.
And for a little taste of the comedy, check out Broadbank Burbcasting podcasts. (And, what the heck, visit the blog of fellow Burbank writer Johnny B). On the “Last Hour” podcast, you’ll hear me and Johnny B singing in the background on the final song (along with half the rest of the state of Ohio), and a toy-store bit co-written by Johnny B his own self.
Whenever I speak at writers conferences on the topic of “Write Tight,” I offer a free copy of my book of the same name to the audience member who can guess what this bloated, euphemistic product description is intended to describe: “hydro-force blast cup.”
Though it actually describes a common household tool, a “hydro-force blast cup” sounds military, doesn’t it? The military, after all, is good at such euphemistic bombast, such as from the Vietnam days where using Agent Orange for defoliation was called “resources control management” (sounds like they were filing all jungle plants in a big cabinet in alphabetical order) or more recently to former military officers appearing on news shows to offer “independent” analysis of the Iraq war as “message force multipliers.” In the latter case, I bow to The Daily Show’s recent unveiling of this euphemism, paired ironically with an instance where the military titled a report with much wordage, yet direct wordage:
Such euphemisms as “message force multipliers” should be flushed, but unfortunately they seem to proliferate to the point of clogging up the communications pipelines—and when that happens, it may be time to bring out the hydro-force blast cup: the handy-dandy toilet plunger.
(Shameless Plug Alert [avert your eyes]: Write Tight is new in paperback from Sourcebooks. End Shameless Plug Alert.)
is new in paperback from Sourcebooks. End Shameless Plug Alert.)
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