Apostrophe Apocalypse

at the end of the world

Talk about a tempest in a teapot—I have been absolutely bewildered that it has come down to this. Grammar nerds ruling the world as if words finally matter. Does everyone forget that President Biden suffered from stuttering as a child and worked very hard to overcome it? And sometimes, a hesitation or pause is necessary to strengthen that resolve. I firmly believe that he was calling out that one particular supporter who spewed vile rhetoric at the rally for the orange blob. As someone who has spent a lifetime transcribing from tapes, I defy anyone to tell the difference between either “supporters” or “supporter’s” because of course the spoken word doesn’t account for apostrophes or punctuation of any kind for that matter.

Which leads me this morning to the Oxford comma, another fave for grammar nerds. I personally have always preferred to keep that last comma in a series (having been raised in England) but it is actually losing favor in American English. In case you are not familiar with this tricky little comma, let me introduce you. When making a list of things, it is usual to separate them by commas, and the final item in the list before the following verb may be omitted (the Oxford comma). Usually, this is not of great importance. But in checking my sources before making a mistake this morning, I find out that the Oxford comma actually played an important part in a quite recent court case. The judge finally ruled that because the final comma had been eliminated it was unclear what the final item in the list was meant to be. Fascinating story which you, too, may find on our latest world-changing invention—the Internet.

So back to the political nature of speech. Of course, words matter. But it is important to also remember the context in which they are spoken, the manner in which they are delivered, and ultimately the human reaction they may cause. For our press to have spent so much time and energy in this last run-up to the election on the intricacies of grammar is appalling to me. And I am an English major!

Please do not be led astray by what is literally unimportant. We all saw the video of the so-called comic who absolutely denigrated the woman who will be the next president. I researched his background and found that he had submitted his “shtick” to the Republican campaign for vetting prior to his delivery. Supposedly, the only thing they objected to was actually calling Kamala a cunt. There, I used the word everyone seems to feel is so vile. What makes that so much worse than all the other things he said about her? And then when the opposition made a video about the “C” word which ends up to be calling Kamala a Communist, I found that much more offensive.

One last thought this morning. With all the voting options available this election, I began wondering what happens if you cast your ballot early, then you die? So of course I had to look that up. It turns out that there are a number of different approaches according to the various States. Some are completely silent on the issue, others have attempted to account for that possibility. It seems to me that it might be awfully hard to keep things straight (which is why I’m so old-fashioned I am waiting until Tuesday to cast my vote in person—on the off-chance that I were no longer here). You may read the rules for the various States on-line as I did if you, too, are interested. The State of Connecticut, where I live, has the rule that a dead person’s absentee ballot will not be counted unless they are a member of the Armed Forces. I suppose that’s a nod to the fact that they might have been killed in service to the country. But talk about convoluted—as I’ve shared before, I have been a moderator of a polling place in prior years, and it’s hard enough keeping track of the living voters, let alone the dead ones!

TTFN