Poets, priests and politicians/Have words to thank for their position

I’ve been reading ‘Eats Shoots and Leaves’ by Lynn Truss. It’s quite a strange thing to see one’s pet peeves turned into a book about punctuation. The inability of most people to use apostrophes correctly, for example, drives me absolutely bonkers. On the other hand, I’ve had to drag some of my older colleagues kicking and screaming to the world of full-stop-less abbreviation (e.g. AMA vs A.M.A.). And the use of excessive exclamation marks (and the commencement of sentences with “And”) is a phenomenon I have gladly embraced.

The English language, as it’s often been said, is a strange thing.

For every rule, there’s an exception. For every exception, there’s another exception. For every painstakingly* created literary image there’s “OMG PM me! @TEOTD i CRS lyk punk28shun rulz”**.

I have been known to chuckle to myself over wrongly applied punctuation. More to the point, I’ve been known to carry around examples of wrongly applied punctuation with me and drag it out of my bag to stop passers-by, illustrating my displeasure with jabbing hand-gestures and raised voice. The Liberal Party’s promotional gear prior to the last Victorian election was a case in point – some bright spark put inverted commas around all of their key initiatives, making them seem like ironic observations as opposed to plans for the future***.

Spell-check programs haven’t helped. They seem to think that everyone who speaks English is American. And woe betide anyone who doesn’t pay attention as it auto-corrects, as anyone who has ever typed a document with the word “Gillard” in it may have found out. Or anyone who uses the phrase “woe betide”.

But let’s not pretend that the new era of online language is the first time people have ever mis-spelled or mispronounced words.

As a child, my mother used to think that Medallion (as in “Medallion cough syrup”) was pronounced “med-a-led-a-led-allin”. She thought this right up until the moment she suggested that my grandmother should buy some "med-a-led-a-led-allin" for her younger brother.

My friend MW, who is a constant source of delight but struggles to remember proverbs, once asked her university lecturer if she was “barking up the wrong tree without a paddle” in a first year essay on anatomy. I for one think this is an acceptable usage - because if one is barking up the wrong tree, one probably does not have a paddle.

Another friend used to think that “pedestrian” was pronounced “pede-STRAIN”.

And because I don’t like to catalogue the mild embarrassments of others without landing myself in it at some stage, I am proud to announce that this week I learned that Appletise is pronounced to rhyme with "appetise". Not, as I had thought, apple-tease. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to pronounce the word wrongly to find that out. So, you know, bullet dodged. On the other hand, I’ve just told everyone on the internet what a dick I am (UPDATE: its gets worse. Ms Bloom reliably informs me that the product I am thinking of is apple-TISER, although there is also a product called "appletise" made by another manufacturer).

Our language is supposed to be evolving. I appreciate this. It leaves plenty of room for Grizzlewick’s use of the word “automatic” as a verb to become a cutting edge word usage. Surely it’s only a matter of time before some one utters the phrase

“We used to undertake this task with a cumbersome manual process. But now, we just automatic it”.

Or not (fragment, consider revision).



* and one would be advised not to get the author of this book or notable literary personages started on the difference between “pains-taking” and “pain-staking”.

** “Oh my god, private message me! At the end of the day, I can’t remember stuff like punctuation rules”

*** With this in mind, I’m expecting an pointed “HAY DONT LYK IT Y DONT U GO X A TREE SUCKAH” response at the end of this post.