BOE #64

politically incorrect

So many errors. So little time. Scroll down.

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I snagged this one off a comment thread on Instapundit, where I’ve learned not to say anything, but where illiteracy and carelessness abound. The average age of the Insty commenter is around 60, so age and the sloppiness that comes with age might explain so many of these typos. It could also be lack of education plus ingrained bad habits, or any combination of unfortunate factors. Alas, there’s no way to beam literacy into people’s brains, and since the people who most need correction are generally the people who most hate to hear correction, Substack is where I must go to vent my spleen. Which you get to see for free. Yay. Scroll down.

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1. Before I left high school is an introductory phrase, and most introductory phrases take commas. Before I left high school, I learned…

2. After the phrase the wisdom comes a proverb (“F—em if they…”) that’s set off by quotes. The em should have an apostrophe before it, and the F should have a single em dash, not three hyphens, after it. F—’em if they…

3. Assuming this is a US writer (as most Insty commenters are), the period at the end of the quote should be inside the quotation mark. If this is a UK writer, then there’s no problem. “F— ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

4. The opening phrase Of course is, again, an introductory phrase, so it should be italicized. Of course, that was in the…

5. The number 1950’s should not have an apostrophe. It’s 1950s. No apostrophe.

6. Right after 1950s, there should be a comma because a comma-and needs to separate the two independent clauses. Of course, that was in the 1950s, and sensitivity was not in vogue.

What a slog. So the corrected sentence should look like this:

Before I left high school, I learned the wisdom of “F— ’em if they can’t take a joke.” Of course, that was in the 1950s, and sensitivity was not in vogue.

Jesus Christ, people.

Well, you’re not a good garbageman if you resent your chosen job, so I should quit my whining. It’s in the nature of people to be, with few exceptions, careless slobs and drooling idiots (as I can be in certain aspects of my life), and language mostly evolves through fuckups that propagate through the population (but, yes, also less often through deliberate rebelliousness and creativity). Once widely accepted, the fuckups become, as they say, received English. Life is always in process; you can’t get attached to the idea that things ought to stay the same forever. Nothing concrete ever stays the same. Things are always in process, and reality is a mix of structure and fluidity. Why do galaxies so often repeat the starfishy spiral pattern? Why does Earthlife so often exhibit axial or radial symmetry? These are fixed patterns constantly iterating and reiterating themselves. And yet the tangible forms that exhibit these patterns grow old, decay, die, crumble, wash/blow away, and get replaced. The static and the dynamic, as Robert Pirsig noted in his novel Lila.