The Angel of the Date Stamp

And the Angel of the Date Stamp sayeth to the library assistant:

"Yeay and the day cometh - and thou shalt know the day for even as thy cup of tea runneth over, so shalt thy tank run dry.

"And upon this day thou shalt press 'send' on the Important Message without checking it and a Great Wailing shall arise from all the other branches under the Heavens crying: 'What hast thou done?'

"And it will come to pass that He Who Designeth the poster and misseth off the date, hath finished his Placement and vanished off the Face of the Earth along with the programme and fonts he useth. And all will turn unto thee and say: 'Thou knowest of such things - thou shalt make reparations.'

"And things which Need To Be Done, turneth out to have already been done - but only after thou hast done them again. And all manner of Trouble and Difficulty shall present themselves unto thee, and thou shalt be beset on all sides by Confusion, Interruption and Frustration. For it is written: even as you juggle Many Things, so shall you drop them.

"And the very Air shall freeze and the Sky darken, and there shall be no more Mince Pies in the staff room and so thou shalt go hungry unto the Counter. And there, the Borrowers shall tug at thy Cardigan saying: 'I gaveth it to the Charity Shop by accident.' And: 'Yeay, I have renewed this many times online and oweth you nothing.' And 'Bring forth that book by that woman whose name I knoweth not who hath written that book, the name of which I also knoweth not?'

"And yeay thou shalt walk through many corridors in the wilderness, and from thence to the children's library, they shall Speaketh in Tongues saying: 'Une pomme de terre, tra la la!' with great volume until the Skies rend and thy ears bleed.

"And when thy Work is finished, and thy Struggles have brought forth ill-formed and brutish Conclusions, thou shalt think of many other ways to have better completed thy tasks.

"And thou shalt cover thine head with thine hands... like this."

A Penny for Them

Okay, people. I'm feeling a rising swell of righteous indignation about bankers!

I've been thinking about the bonuses* bankers are getting whilst the rest of the country worries about rising costs, job losses and the other austerities to come. But how can we make our voices heard? Aren't we powerless in giving our pennyworth?

Yes, I've been thinking about the humble penny.

What if thousands and thousands of people went into their local bank on the same day and each paid in a cheque (or several) for a penny?

Think of the paperwork it would generate as each cheque had to go through clearing! People could go online and make 1p transfers, 1p payments. If enough people did it, and did it for a reason (ie a clear link to an online campaign that explained our disgust at banker's bonuses) it could make the ordinary person's view heard more strongly.

...I'm thinking on my feet here, but there are other ideas around this: everyone could pay their 1p to the same person or organisation, or charity (do organisations/charities get charged for cheques?). Or we could all hoard our pennies and then pay them all in on the same day...

I know there'd be queues and lowest-paid bank staff would suffer**, but it might make a point, eh?

What do you think? Are you with me? Shall I attempt to 'go viral' on this?

And what should it be called? I'm thinking:

• A Penny for Them... which is APT
• Watching The Pennies
• Spend a Penny
• Bad Penny
• Every Penny Counts
• Until The Penny Drops...

Meanwhile, if you are against the Bankers' Bonuses, there are two campaigns that I've found on Facebook:

Give Up The Bonus - founded my pugnacious North-west MP, John Prescott

NoBonus4RBS - founded by maverick songwriter Billy Bragg

.... except that... just a minute... these may have been campaigns from previous years... *sigh*

* See (see The Poet Laura-eate)

** I used to be a bank clerk so I know. 1980 - 1990. I call them my 'wilderness years.'

CAPITAL IDEA?

Something I learned when I worked in Public Relations (and which is also a matter of common sense) is often ignored or forgotten by graphic designers - beware of capitals!

Capitals or Upper Case if you want to be snobby - or majuscules* if you want to get all technical - help us to signify new sentences, denote proper names (as opposed to improper names e.g. 'you arse!') and attach importance or emphasis. These are some of the benefits of not having a unicase language, or being German, where random capitalisation appears to occur. 

(Of course, you can also attach importance or emphasis using other devices e.g. italic, bold, underlining or size or a big red felt pen.)

Compare:

EVEN BEFORE THE USE OF CAPITALS BECAME SYNONYMOUS WITH 'SHOUTING' IN EMAILS, TEXTS AND SOCIAL NETWORKS, THEY WERE BAD AND WRONG.

with:

Even before the use of capitals became synonymous with 'shouting' in emails, texts and social networks they were BAD and WRONG.

Why?

1. Because it is much more difficult to take in blocks of text that are all exactly the same height. We need those ascenders and descenders to speed up word recognition, which is done by shapes and patterns as much as anything else. UPPER CASE kills - don't believe me? Read Capital Offenders

2. Because IF YOU emphasize everything, you EMPHASISE NOTHING

I'll finish with a little ditty from Roger McGough:

ONCE I LIVED MY LIFE IN CAPITALS
MY LIFE INTENSELY PHALLIC
but now I'm sadly lower case
with the occasional italic

* The lower case letters are called miniscules even when they're not as small as this

Related posts: 10 Punctuation Pet Hates    and     Freeze! It's the Grammar Police

10 Punctuation Pet Hates

It's not that I'm pedantic - I'm not going to kill over this. But I like things to be done properly. 

Those who run "rough-shod" over our language - using respectable punctuation marks for their own nefarious purposes - must be found and stopped! Out with their dodgy colons and enough, already, of their superfluous exclamation marks!!!!!

Here are my top ten punctuation pet hates:

1. Like the picture says - if you don't use commas when you should, a little old man dies somewhere. Classic example (of errant comma, not little old man dying): here (thanks, Tony!)

2. Errant apostrophes - also known as the Grocer's Apostrophe. Or the Grocers' Apostrophe. Depending on the number of grocers, which is the whole point really. Many fine examples at apostrophecatastrophes.com, but the one pictured (right) was discovered by GrammarBlog.com in the "illustrious" Daily Mail

3. Unnecessary quotation marks - make you sound sarcastic even when you're not. e.g. Nice "blog" Clare. There is also something vaguely nudge-nudge wink-wink about them which implies that what you're saying is a euphemism for something filthy.  Go to unnecessaryquotes.com for more examples than you can "shake" a "stick" at.

4. Too many full stops. This might be a personal view - feel free to dash me down in flames - but I think we've gone beyond needing every acronym interspersed with dots. It may have been S.W.A.L.K. in the old days but it's SWALK now. Save your stops - you might need them one day. Soon.

5. Too many exclamation marks!!!!!  I know, I know - I do this too!! I must be found and stopped... oh there I am. Stop it. OK!!!

6. This isn't punctuation per se, but it's still annoying: Random letters Capitalised for no good Reason. We're not German You Know.

7. I'm being really  picky here, but I was picked up once on this one and it hurt: too many dots in your ellipses. There should be three. No more... no less. Any other number is an abomination - unless it's a full stop, in which case I'll let you off.

8. That little ~ symbol. I mean, what's it called and what's it for?

9. worst of all people who dont use punctuation at all maybe because they dont know how and just leave it to you to work out what the hell they are on about

and finally...

...that brings us to number 10 - which is your chance to join in. What else should be on the list? Tell me your punctuation pet hates?

Come on..... "Spill" the ~ Bean's!!!

p.s. Do you have great examples of bad punctuation, grammar, spelling? Send them to the lovely Grammarphile at RedPenInc

Hey you! Yes YOU with the haiku!

I feel guilty.

I'm not a big fan of the haiku poetic form the haiku, so I left it out of my recent Teeny Weenie Poems post.

The haiku is a Japanese concept which classically has quite specific rules. Three lines, with 5,7 and 5 syllables respectively, they are supposed to capture a moment with resonances within the wider world or, indeed, life itself. There should be a seasonal reference. The syllable count matters, but it isn't an end in itself. 

What is my objection? Just because you write something 5/7/5 doesn't turn you into [insert name of famous Japanese poet here]. If it isn't evocative, illuminating or moving, then it isn't a poem and whatever you do with your syllables I'm still going to say 'sayanora.' Sushi's just cold rice and raw fish without the salt of the soy and the whaaa-hey! of the wasabi. 

Maybe it's just the poor haiku I deplore. For example, why The Guardian chose to applaud a CEO's resignation in a very ho-hum haiku earlier this year, I have no idea. If you choose to resign on Twitter, as Jonathan Schwartz did, you're not going to have space for a sonnet. I'd say to him: 'Don't give up the day job,' but it's a bit late for that.

Having said all that, there are some modern poets I admire who manage to step into the ornamental pond of haiku without getting their toes nibbled by the koi. They understand that you can mess (a bit) with the line length but you have to be saying something - you have to have heart.

I'm sure Manchester-based Tony Walsh - festival poet and slam champion - wouldn't mind me posting a three of his gems from Seventeen Haiku here... and if he does, all he has to do is say so.

In the 10 items or less queue
with twelve items, thinking
'punk's not dead'

She pulled petals from daisies
and thought that he loved her.
He loved her not.

Anyway, haiku are branching out. There's an entire magazine and website called Scifaiku (which I've been published in) devoted to Japanese short forms on science fiction themes. Not to mention the zombie haikus I may have alluded to earlier. Dammit! I wasn't going to mention them.

Oh, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the British Haiku Society seem keen in on the old 5/7/5 too. And I do like the haiku that won their international Haiku Award 2009:

in the silence
before the dreaming
the warmth of a paw on my hand
 

Claire Knight, UK

Apart from the sci-fi ones, over which I will pass a discreet veil, the only haiku I've ever had published was this one (which, yes, before you point it out, has no sense of place, seasonal reference etc etc etc):

Just before he died
he told me his palms had changed -
some lines were shorter

I have to finish with this one - which I believe to be a tribute to Spike Milligan by Bill Taylor, which is why it's called a Spaiku: 

Haiku's inventor
must have had seven fingers
on his middle hand

You can share your own or favourites, but only if they are profoundly moving or at least slightly funny. I'll get no comments now, but like I said - I'm not that keen on haiku.