Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [79]
The lesson here is like the first one: relax. Let your writing flow without restraint. Sentence breaks and breathing stops should come naturally. Problems occur when you have to choose which type of punctuation to use.
Let’s start by separating the few necessary ones, such as commas and periods, from the ones that are rarely understood, such as colons and semicolons. From the looks of the word semicolon, it seems to be worth half a colon, but it’s really only worth about a tenth of a colon. That means you should use the marks in that proportion.
Author and language expert Paul Robinson says that more than half the semicolons he sees “should be periods, and probably another quarter should be commas.” He also says all punctuation should be “as invisible as possible” so as not to be a distraction.1 One way to make them invisible is to use as few as possible.
On the other hand, famed nitpicker Lynne Truss admits that punctuation is going out of style.2 Apparently all we need to do is to wait.
LESSON EIGHT: USE FILLERS, LIKE, A LOT
If you agree that it is time to slow down the language train so your thoughts can catch up to a conversation, this lesson is for you. It is about words you can nonchalantly mumble while you grab a split second or two to think about what you want—or don’t want—to say next.
It should be clear by now that language changes are arriving much too fast for anyone to absorb or understand them all and still be able to respond smartly before the response gap becomes embarrassingly long.
When such a point arrives in a conversation, you have a wide choice of words or phrases—including some already well-known ones—that can give you those extra fractions of a second to plan your next words. There is no hiding the fact that the most-used fillers are like and you know.
The beauty of these handy words is that they are simply not noticed because almost everybody else uses them without realizing it or hearing themselves say them. The words can be inserted before, like, almost any other word or phrase without, you know, giving even a hint to people nearby that you are grasping for a more thoughtful response to what was said earlier.
Notice how the two types of pauses were slipped into the above sentence so deftly that they are not noticeable even in printed form.
After all, what are the alternatives? Who wants to hear a string of ahs and uhs or worse while waiting for the next word from a conversational partner?
LESSON NINE: KILL OBSCENITIES WITH EXCESS
As noted earlier, when Vice President Dick Cheney told Senator Patrick Leahy to “go f— yourself,” the media reported it, but hardly anybody was shocked. Nor was anyone shocked when Vice President Joe Biden said the Obama health care bill was “a big f—ing deal.”
Expletives and obscenities are still being used often, but some are clearly losing their punch because of overuse. The real killer here seems to be excessive repetition, not the pleas and threats of parents, teachers, or movie and broadcast codes.
Under the circumstances, the best way to strike a blow against the most offensive obscenities is to use them to excess until negative public reaction works its will.
Perhaps the best evidence for such an approach is the story (told earlier in this book) of what has happened to the verb suck, a word that often had an obscene meaning. Parents and teachers didn’t kill its offensive meaning with threats. It died of natural causes from excessive use. More recently, it has even acquired respectability with a newly accepted meaning.
Meanwhile, the blogosphere has been inundated with obscenities. What sucks there is the anonymity. That seems to open the floodgates to obscenities galore.
LESSON TEN: LEARN TO CODE-SWITCH
Now for the real fun part: finding the tricky middle ground of language that allows you to shift lingos to fit the current scene, especially if you are young.
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