Tuesday poem: Its’ a beautifull thing
March 5, 2012
Its’ a beautifull
thing to see proper grammar like what beerded Oxford dons’ would write but in the stile of Australia, all sun-bronzed and layed-back and life-savery. I love to see apostrophes’ swimming like little pods’ of dolphins’, near sees’ of expectation points and colons’ semi-twisted like lickety-licorishes’, all hang on; lets’ go and sea. Expectation marks are natures little wake up calls never use one when seven is possible!!! Or three. If you are unsure, its’ a good rule of thumbs’ to use apostrophes’. They pinch the reader, little crabby claws’ at the end of words’ to wake him up. Or her two. Spellings’ important, but apostrophes’ maketh the prose zing; unzip it’s full potenshal almost a Brazilian wax all nice and neat and proprietry like Auntie Sadies’ famous unsean special scones’ with cream.
P.S. Cottier
I wrote this for the ACT Writers Centre magazine ACTWrite, for a special edition on editing and grammar. So successful was my effort that the Centre was approached by a person who teaches editing at the Canberra Insitute of Technology for use in her course as an example of something that really needs editing. Of course I gave permission to use it, with the proviso that students be told that I am in fact literate.
Honestly, I am. Im a Docter of Filosofy.
It is so hard to write that badly. I notice that I still spelt Australia correctly. And grammar. And cream. Sigh.
Now, for properly punctuated poems of awl sorts’, please click on this feather:
Madness and punctuation
May 29, 2009
Am I mad? Sometimes I think that I have a particular disease that makes my eyes see things that others don’t: the misplaced apostrophes with their little bracketed eyelids smiling as if to say ‘Yes, we’re here, it’s true’ or more accurately, ‘Yes, were here, its’ true’. (Insert long scream of Munchian proportions. I actually saw an its’ the other day. Them’s true words.)
Am I the only person still to wince,
to feel as if she had been pinched
by the claws of these evil crabs
with their crooked apostrophes?
Scuttlers’ of near illiteracy
I drown in your misplaced seas’.
(Of course that won’t work unless I used a font with nice curved apostrophes like claws. Please just use your imaginations…)
As for me, I think vodka is the only answer. It’s a nice blank canvas of a drink, punctuated by a neat, oval full-stop of a single olive, with no apostrophes in sight.
Cheers’ (Scream…)
PS Cottier 