Grammar tsar ... we love you
FOR more than 10 years, an anonymous corrector of dodgy English has been venturing out under cover of darkness to tidy up the punctuation on Bristol’s shop fronts and street signs. “I do think it’s a cause worth pursuing,” he said. Or did he say “clause”?
Whatever, the man dubbed “the Banksy of punctuation” is a pedant after my own heart. Although his identity remains unknown, the BBC announced it had tracked him down and accompanied him on one of his clandestine manoeuvres.
The grammar vigilante began his mission by scratching out an extraneous apostrophe on a sign. Unable to put a full stop to it there, he’s since built himself an “apostrophiser” – a long-handled piece of equipment that helps him reach up to shop signs to add in, or cover up, offending punctuation marks. The first job he tackled was a council sign including the words “Monday’s to Friday’s” – he managed to scratch off those “ridiculous apostrophes”.
Among the signs he has corrected in and around Bristol (hometown of street artist Banksy) is a manicure salon that used to advertise “Amys Nail’s”. “It was so loud and in your face. I couldn’t abide it.”
The mystery punctuation protector says he works in engineering, but I suspect there’s a frustrated sub-editor inside fighting to get out.
Last Monday, he featured in a documentary on BBC Radio 4. Such a waste. Probably the one place you can get away with appalling punctuation is on the airwaves.
It’s been a bad week for ... words AS punctuation evolves, so do words. Hipster trends which dominate popular culture are starting to work their way in to the dictionary. More than 300 words, including “man bun”, “cold brew” and “dabbing”, have been added to online database Dictionary.com.
But some of the “new” words aren’t that novel. The word “lightsaber” has been included 40 years after the original Star Wars film was released. Perhaps come 2057, the “apostrophiser” will join the armoury of words in our lexicon.
Of course, by then the apostrophe will have disappeared, gobbled up by a giant syntactic Death Star along with spelling and grammar.
May the for’s be with you.