Grogger Grammar
Every now and then I get on a grammar kick.
Several years ago I fought a gentleman's fight to remove "X" from the alphabet. I mean the X doesn't do anything that the hard K and S or the Z can't do, and wouldn't the alphabet seem so much more concise at 25 letters as opposed to 26. Of course, that pesky X-ray just looked weird spelled EKS-ray. Needless to say I lost that battle, as you all know (although I still lobby).
Then there was the Eksclamation Ekscitement of the mid 90s. The long, slender dripping Eksclamation point is so mysterious. Ah! He is such an interesting punctuation mark simply in his appearance, and man, the way it can bring to life a statement. Just think about a note I got on my desk last week: “YOU'RE FIRED!!!” Now that had pizzazz. On the other hand the first draft didn't have the same kick, "while we generally find your work abysmal, you are always late, you leave early, and when you are here we are not sure what you do, we simply do not have the funds to pay your poorly negotiated wage nor the coffee and cheese nip bills that you continue to accrue. We are asking you to please never return to this office." Here the obvious was belabored only to end the ranting with the Eksclamation Point’s bastard child—the Period (the story of which cannot be covered here because of the strong emotions that the affair still evokes with the Question Mark). Unfortunately, the Eksclamation Point Ekscitement faired only modest results, but at least Yahoo! bought into it!
My latest grammar kick is the Parentheses promotion. The twins (that begins and ends). The friends with bends. The brother and sister that are real sentence twisters. Oh how I love these guys! I invite them into my sentences to give (the real smart ass) meaning to my sentences, and if you skip over the little secret shared between the brother and sister then you still get the gist of the sentence. Teachers (who never understood my use of the parentheses) have told me to use the Parentheses to store the “beside the point” messages. I thought about that. That would mean that I should tattoo one Parenthesis to my head and the other to my foot. I totally disagree. The Parentheses shout out to the reader, “this little message is cute but if it’s too offensive for you, then it is Parenthetical.” What is even better about the Parentheses is that instead of subtlety including additional information in the sentence, the message has attention drawn to it by the grand introduction and salutation by Mr. & Mrs. Parenthesis.
Even more recently I have sought to incorporate the “air Parans.” Years ago my father started the air quotes, which we all of come to know and love. The air Parans have not been as widely accepted. It seems that just as on the written page, Parans will continue to be the jealous cousins of the quotation marks, but what would you ekspect from that colon family.
I implore you to use more parenthesis (whether you want to or not). They are having a difficult time providing for their families (the brackets), and as of late they have had to turn to prostitution. Mrs. Parenthesis has been working night jobs on the IM circuit :) (look familiar?) Mr. Parenthesis has not fared as well there because seemingly everyone is happy on the IM circuit—probably because they are chatting and not working :(
Please stay tuned as we ramp up for the Em--Dash mania slated for winter 05-06.
Several years ago I fought a gentleman's fight to remove "X" from the alphabet. I mean the X doesn't do anything that the hard K and S or the Z can't do, and wouldn't the alphabet seem so much more concise at 25 letters as opposed to 26. Of course, that pesky X-ray just looked weird spelled EKS-ray. Needless to say I lost that battle, as you all know (although I still lobby).
Then there was the Eksclamation Ekscitement of the mid 90s. The long, slender dripping Eksclamation point is so mysterious. Ah! He is such an interesting punctuation mark simply in his appearance, and man, the way it can bring to life a statement. Just think about a note I got on my desk last week: “YOU'RE FIRED!!!” Now that had pizzazz. On the other hand the first draft didn't have the same kick, "while we generally find your work abysmal, you are always late, you leave early, and when you are here we are not sure what you do, we simply do not have the funds to pay your poorly negotiated wage nor the coffee and cheese nip bills that you continue to accrue. We are asking you to please never return to this office." Here the obvious was belabored only to end the ranting with the Eksclamation Point’s bastard child—the Period (the story of which cannot be covered here because of the strong emotions that the affair still evokes with the Question Mark). Unfortunately, the Eksclamation Point Ekscitement faired only modest results, but at least Yahoo! bought into it!
My latest grammar kick is the Parentheses promotion. The twins (that begins and ends). The friends with bends. The brother and sister that are real sentence twisters. Oh how I love these guys! I invite them into my sentences to give (the real smart ass) meaning to my sentences, and if you skip over the little secret shared between the brother and sister then you still get the gist of the sentence. Teachers (who never understood my use of the parentheses) have told me to use the Parentheses to store the “beside the point” messages. I thought about that. That would mean that I should tattoo one Parenthesis to my head and the other to my foot. I totally disagree. The Parentheses shout out to the reader, “this little message is cute but if it’s too offensive for you, then it is Parenthetical.” What is even better about the Parentheses is that instead of subtlety including additional information in the sentence, the message has attention drawn to it by the grand introduction and salutation by Mr. & Mrs. Parenthesis.
Even more recently I have sought to incorporate the “air Parans.” Years ago my father started the air quotes, which we all of come to know and love. The air Parans have not been as widely accepted. It seems that just as on the written page, Parans will continue to be the jealous cousins of the quotation marks, but what would you ekspect from that colon family.
I implore you to use more parenthesis (whether you want to or not). They are having a difficult time providing for their families (the brackets), and as of late they have had to turn to prostitution. Mrs. Parenthesis has been working night jobs on the IM circuit :) (look familiar?) Mr. Parenthesis has not fared as well there because seemingly everyone is happy on the IM circuit—probably because they are chatting and not working :(
Please stay tuned as we ramp up for the Em--Dash mania slated for winter 05-06.
posted by floyd at 10:05 AM
6 Comments:
I know eXactly what you're talking about! (Although you didn't mention the SmartA@#! who came up with the @#$% symbol signs in place of @$#*(& words)
...... hey Jere .... I don't get it .......???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Getting rid of X would cause unbearable strife in the product marketing world.
Can you imagine trying to sell "OS EKS"?
And what would happen to the Ecks Games? Or Generation Ecks? Even Generation Neckst? Now that is a twister...neckst.
But why stop at Ecks? What about "Q"? Kwite the interesting kwestion if you ask me. And that puts us at 24, which is no good either.
Let's get rid of "J" also. "Ghust what is going on here Ghohnson?!" Ghumping, ghousting, etc.
Now we are down to 23. Are there 3 more we can get rid of to make a nice and round 20?
F = PH
That might have been the craziest thing I have ever read. No joke son. Now I'm gonna go play my xylophone.
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