Hello, and an arousingly pleasant day to you all! Hot on the heels of Thursday’s ‘The Best of Facebook: A Copy & Paste Retrospective of the Friendly Fun Times...’ I have written a small piece on what has turned out to be several subjects, some of which I’ve spoken a great deal about in the past, both in this Blog and in actual social interaction with other human beings. As you all know, I believe with a violent and temperamental passion that language is a democracy. What many of you won’t know is that this is simply my unnecessarily posh way of saying that I don’t care if you can’t spell. Nor do I really give a flying dog’s bollocks if you think prepositions are lovely things to end sentences with. If you want to throw the word ‘literally’ immediately before a metaphor, then all power to you; do it until you no longer know or care who or where you are. HOWEVER. I read something today which, despite exhibiting overwhelming contempt for linguistic carelessness, was very enjoyable, and filled with so much good sense and dry humour that I very nearly collapsed in my chair in the throes of a quivering orgasm...
Now, I doubt any of you are Daily Telegraph readers, and that is perfectly understandable. Robert Webb writes a very enjoyable weekly column, but apart from that it’s exactly as you would expect: liberty-loathing, Imperialism-loving anachronisms who still masturbate over photographs of Queen Victoria with sufficient intensity to make igniting their dried out carcasses a tangible risk. However, a chap by the name of Simon Heffer (a hilarious name, to be sure) used to write a little column called ‘Simon Heffer’s Style Notes’. As you saw if you had the decency to follow the link I went through the trouble of providing, this column took the form of an email (or more likely a letter on extravagant personalised stationery, written in ink extracted from the body of an extremely rare octopus) to all staff at The Daily Telegraph, warning of the dangers of unprofessionalism. The use of the word ‘unprofessionalism’ is probably a sterling example of unprofessionalism, as, despite reassurance from Microsoft Word, I am not convinced it is a real word. After all, Microsoft Word is trying to tell me that the last but one comma is supposed to be a semicolon! To think, some people worry that machines will one day usurp humanity in a bloody coup. If my undisciplined human brain, a soggy mass of greyness suffering from border-line senility, can grasp the concept of a semicolon, then why can’t a piece of software that thinks thousands of times faster?
Anyway... Simon Heffer is everything you are currently imagining. He loathes Americanisms with the white-hot intensity most people reserve for rival sports teams or Piers Morgan. He seems to think The Daily Telegraph is read solely by illustrious military men with moustaches and astounding grammatical awareness. You get the impression that, if he ever met one of the journalists guilty of making the mistakes he takes so much pleasure in recounting, he might well take his cane to them. I don’t actually know how old he is; I just assume he is an old bastard with a big bastarding cane...
I’ve just Googled him and...well... why don’t you Google him as well and then I needn’t burst several blood vessels attempting to censor myself. Just do a quick image search and look at the first two. In fact, here they are... one... and... two. I think they encapsulate everything about him as a human being. There is literally nothing you could say to me about this man that could possibly change my impression of him as based upon those two photos.
Anyway... Why must I always drag you along on my uncontrollable tangents? I’m surprised you don’t get lost in here for days on end...
Anyway... Despite my new-found loathing for the man, I must admit he knows his grammar, unlike a great many people who see fit to pick faults with that of others. It isn’t just grammar though. One part I found rather good was the following extract:
If you find yourself using a word of whose meaning you are unsure, do look it up in the dictionary. When we get a word wrong it is embarrassing. It demeans us as professional writers and shakes our readers’ confidence in us. In recent weeks we have confused endocrinology – the study of the body’s endocrine system – with dendrochronology, which is the study of dating trees. More embarrassing still, we accused the eminent broadcaster Sir David Attenborough of being a naturist – someone who chooses not to wear clothes – when in fact he is a naturalist.
Despite his being a pompous, conservative cunt, I find him really very funny. Another gem reads as follows:
Homophones remain abundant and show up the writer and the newspaper or website. We are quality media, and quality media do not make mistakes such as these: “the luck of the drawer”, “through the kitchen sink”, “through up” “dragging their heals” and “slammed on the breaks”, all of which are clichés that might not be worthy of a piece of elegant writing even if spelt correctly. We have also confused Briton and Britain, hanger and hangar, hordes and hoards, peeled and pealed, lightening and lightning, stationery and stationary, principal and principle, peninsula and peninsular, licence and license and, in something of a pile-up, born, borne and bourn. If you are unsure of the meanings of any of these words, look them up before proceeding further.
One can almost see the man’s self-importance seeping through the monitor and oozing down the screen. Yet, on first reading, I found this laugh-out-loud funny. I audibly chuckled. His farewell, though, merits the accolade of ‘priceless’ if anything I have read in a newspaper ever has...
Finally, may I mention some factual matters? Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Air Chief Marshal is spelt thus; and Mark Antony thus.
With best wishes
Simon Heffer
Associate Editor
The Daily Telegraph
That, gentle reader, is delicious. If I could ingest honey through my eyes, and was of sufficient mental instability to enjoy it, I imagine reading that would be a similar sensation. If I had not discovered in writing this post that Simon Heffer is, indeed, an extraordinarily conservative turd (support for Section 28 instantly puts you in line for what I call an ‘atomic frowning’) then I might think this was a clever fictional alter-ego à la Robin Cooper or Donald Trefusis. The reality is, of course, less pleasant. But that doesn’t mean he is a man entirely without merit or morals...
Sometimes we do not properly think of the sense of what we are writing. . . We wrote that “too many bomb disposal experts” had died in Afghanistan, which prompted an angry reader to ask what an acceptable number of dead experts would have been. We wrote of “an extraordinary killing spree” and were asked, in similar fashion, what would have constituted an ordinary one.
Valid points both, I’m sure you agree.
But now, my friends, I fear I have detained you too long. I hope you have enjoyed this return to what vaguely constitutes normality. I realise it has been many months since a conventional Blog post graced this hallowed webular abode, and I would love to assure you that September will play out in a similar fashion... but I must disappoint you. I must pump your anxious hearts full of lukewarm uncertainty, and justify this violation of trust only by saying that I am not sure how busy I will be in the coming weeks. I am an Honours student now, and I do not really know what that means...
But it sounds fairly serious.
So, I bestow upon you my best wishes, and kisses to be placed on whatever part of your body you deem most worthy.
Jamie
P.S. I hope to see you all at the Games tomorrow!
P.P.S. If you are reading this later than Sunday 22nd August, and I already saw you at the Games, then I am so, so sorry...
