Apostrophe’s and groundhog’s: on promiscuous punctuation
As the great lexicographer Bob Dylan might have asked, “Where have all the apostrophes gone?”
In Birmingham, England, it turns out, they’ve been long time passing: According to an Associated Press report via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, city bureaucrats have been dropping the little floating comma from Birmingham’s street signs since the 1950s. So it’s no longer “St. Paul’s Square”; it’s “St. Pauls Square.” And, as some critics are sniffing, it’s no longer the Queen’s English, it’s the Queens English (which sounds, if you think about it, like the argot of a particular borough of New York City).
Here at Art Scatter we like to think of punctuation as little road signs along the great linguistic superhighway, helpful warnings that a curve is coming in the road and you need to slow down, or a thought has run its course and you need to stop. Pay attention to the road signs and the meaning comes clear, not to mention the rhythm that is playing in the author’s head, and which presumably she or he would love to plant in your own intellectual pulse.
The presence or absence or substitution of a punctuation mark can alter meaning. “What do you mean?” is most likely a simple interrogative: “Can you please explain yourself a little more clearly, so I can understand what you’re saying?”
“What do you mean!” is more likely a challenge, even an exclamation of outrage: “You can’t be serious! I reject with every fiber of my being the very principle on which you build your argument, and I am shocked that a purportedly civilized human being could hold such an errant point of view!”
More poetically (and less argumentatively), the use of punctuation is a handy writers’ tool in the construction of mood and suggestion: “He’s driving fast fast fast” is simply faster to a reader’s eye than “He’s driving fast, fast, fast” — and if the blur of speed is what you’re trying to get across, using commas is like driving in the Indianapolis 500 with your emergency brake on.
Here in The Great Republick That Our Forefathers Built (or is it Forefather’s?) we seem to welcome all those apostrophes banished from Birmingham: As the photo at the top of this post illustrates, we like to throw them into words willy-nilly, like candy confetti on top of a cupcake. For an amusing exploration of the subject, see The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes.
Nor is the comma the only mistress of Americans’ punctuational promiscuity. Over at Blogorrhea, the courtly Mr. Mead Hunter has introduced us to the perverse pleasures of The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, a photographic compilation of signage screwups that are, as the MasterCard commercials say, priceless. And Art Scatter itself confesses to a fondness for the colon that verges on the indiscreet: Like a politician with a wayward passion for that little taste of danger, we let ourselves be seen in public with the slatternly Ms. Colon on our arm far too frequently.
What to do, then, when, punctuationally speaking, we’re not sure what to do? Americans are a practical people (as a nation we are Rome, not Greece; engineers, not artists) and the obvious answer is: avoidance. Just don’t let it be an issue. Around Portland, that means eliminating the historical struggle between Sauvie’s Island and Sauvies Island by settling, at least officially, on Sauvie Island. Nationally, let it be noted that tomorrow morning, when Punxsatawney Phil pokes his head out of his burrow and sniffs around for signs of spring, he will not be marking Groundhog’s Day or Groundhogs Day. It’ll be a singular event: Groundhog Day. And if he casts his shadow just right, maybe we can avoid misplaced apostrophes for six more weeks.
Note: Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Beall, Flickr Creative Commons
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:15 am
i love this, bob. especially on the heels of our conversation about: rhythm.
yes, i too court the ms. colon (god, that does sound indiscreet) too too often. which is, no! not the same as too, too often. (although the question remains - which is more often? with commas, or without?)
what’s jumping around in my mind now is how we shape the thoughts on the page with punctuation, but what the punctuation is trying to get at, trying to make happen is: rhythm. which gets me to the lovely idea that rhythm is at the core of rhetoric…
because rhetoric is really just establishing pattern? and we like to return to certain thought-shapes in the same way that we return to core shapes in our mark-making? ie: circle. line. curve. dot. are there thinking patterns/rhythms like that? interrupt. support. embellish. wander?
mmmm yes. i say: give me the roadsigns.
and then give me the poets who steal them and repost them backwards and upside down.
x
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Bingo, Xtine. Steal the road signs and repost ‘em backwards and upside down! Exactly right.
To be a poet, first you gotta learn the rules. Then you get to break ‘em. If you don’t know what the rules are, you’re not breaking ‘em, you’re just bumbling through. And you’re not making rhythm, you’re just making noise.
February 6th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Thanks for the reminder — I have a review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves ready to post on my blog. It is the “Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” you know.
While you are enamored of the colon, I confess to a recent and torrid affair with the double dash. I never felt any attraction to the double dash for 40+ years, preferring the more subdued attractions of parentheses. But others in my office enjoy the double dash’s favors and I was drawn into the orgy. I am trying to break it off, but as you can see from the prior paragraph, it is not going to be easy for me.
February 6th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Hmmm … so THIS is what we mean when we talk about loving the language!
February 6th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
I read Rose City Reader’s comment on my husband’s computer and couldn’t grab my own fast enough, if you know whaddImean. I am the biggest punctuation slut this side of 82nd Avenue. I love the whole soddy lot of ‘em. The sly little curve of the apostrophe. Those bulgy parentheses. The teasing elipses … Gawd, give me the ripply brackets with the pointy things, and I go uppershift crazy. Which reminds me of my fave of all. THE UPPERCASE. WITH AN EXCLAMATION POINT! But, please, please, let’s keep this just between us. My fingers brush ever so lightly across the keys, but my husband doesn’t have to know, right?
February 7th, 2009 at 7:40 am
James is laughing, but I think it is at us, not with us. TOO BAD! He’s just jealous because he still dictates.
February 7th, 2009 at 8:34 am
I’m sorry. I made a terrible mistake. I meant to say I’m the biggest punctuation slut this side of Venus. My bad.
February 7th, 2009 at 8:45 am
I don’t want to know what James dictates. OK, maybe a little bit.
My own husband, forever nameless, is dallying in the wings, casting furtive glances at these posts, weighing his wit to see whether he dares to throw down his own comma, one keystroke after another.
He can hardly stand it — what in double-dashedness am I typing? Go ahead, Honey. Hit refresh. Let me hand you a hanky first, though.