Monday 11 February 2019

the important things

i used to be quite fascinated with e e cummings. what I should really do now is dive into the vast and deep waves of internet information and remind myself of even one of his poems. but this is the post-truth world so i'll plough on regardless.


i lay in bed last night wondering what it would be like to write a blog post without capital letters. I decided that the capital letter could probably fall out without too much confusion but that I really wouldn't want to do without punctuation. I came to the conclusion that a full stop really is necessary to show that you think that what you have just said makes sense. maybe that's why so many of our politicians don't seem to draw much breath. I listened to boris on the today programme this morning. goodness, i'll miss john humphries.


the apostrophe however or the comma. they do seem elusive to more than gcse english students. I have long thought that in a decade or so the apostrophe will be lost entirely to pedantry.


its probably good to reflect now and then on the important things as long as sanity isnt sacrificed. thats where we are here on the whole brexit thing. will we be british by the end of it or will our nearly arbitrary 1916 border become so soft that that is erased from the next chapter of this small island's turbulent history altogether?


question marks. do we need question marks. we probably need questions. answers would be nice too... (ellipsis. im keeping ellipsis.)





3 comments:

GretchenJoanna said...

Mags, you have left me breathless, in dire need of a period. You call it a "full stop," but surely that bit of punctuation is merely a longer pause, especially in this modern era. I need a chapter break at least, to catch my breath and begin to process all the questions you have raised here.

I had never read the verse of cummings that you share... It also is enough to chew on and soak up for hours and days. That truth, that Truth, I was just wondering about it, about Him, this morning, praying Psalm 51, "For behold, Thou hast loved truth; the hidden and secret things of Thy wisdom hast Thou made manifest unto me." He IS truth - what can it mean that He LOVES truth?

I wondered if it might mean that He loves to shine His light on things/people to reveal what their true nature is.... Well, maybe none of this is related to your post, or maybe all of it is related to everything. I love you!

Lisa Richards said...

Good to see your thoughts this morning, Mags! You're making my brain hurt, lol. Hugs to you and yours!

M.K. said...

You're right that the departure of capitols was not too difficult for me, but the absence of punctuation was troubling. I agree about apostrophes; we can read along without them. But as a high school English teacher, of course I want nothing to leave, and all rules to be observed. I'm a conservative in some ways ... not wanting things to change or be lost. When I study the complexities of our language many centuries ago and realize the fine tuning we have lost, the forms of verbs esp., it troubles me. I don't mind change really -- but continual simplification? That's a different story.

Time stands still

 Hello! Sending you all lots of love from Northern Ireland, where nothing much changes just as everything changes, as usual. Time has stood ...