Let’s talk about punctuation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cue the eye rolls. To allay your burgeoning boredom, I’ll start by telling you a story that illustrates the importance (or downfall, as this case may be) of possessing a grasp of language’s nitty-gritty.
When I was a kid there was a TV program called “The F.B.I.” I liked this show not because I was a budding criminologist, but because I had a crush on the hunky protagonist, Agent Lewis Erskine, portrayed with flair by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.
The episode I remember in particular involved a kidnapping. The ransom note had been crafted of words cut out from magazines and then pasted onto a sheet of paper—a popular medium for extortion in those days. This method is no longer in vogue for two primary reasons: 1. DNA had not yet been discovered as a forensic tool, and an art project like this would be exploding with alleles, and 2. People don’t get magazines the way they used to.
As Detective Erskine examined the clippings, he exclaimed, “Well, I know one thing about this guy: He’s smart; he used a semi-colon.” This was fascinating.
(Do you think Patty Hearst’s ransom note contained a semicolon? I just checked and it did not.)
While I knew what a semicolon looked like, I was years from knowing how to use one properly. For the record, a semicolon is used to separate two independent clauses (i.e., complete sentences) that are closely related in contextual meaning. “Pay the ransom; you can then see Patty” is a good example. Mainly I was intrigued as to how the kidnapper managed to find and then cut out and then glue this tiny punctuation mark to a piece of paper.
I turned my attention to the coffee table that separated me from the TV where my mother had a stock of magazines fanned out, and began looking through them for a semi-colon big enough to stick on a ransom note. I first chose “U.S. News & World Report” because it seemed the smartest but came up dry. Next was “Newsweek.” Again, no luck. I was on a mission. “Ladies Home Journal,” “Life,” “Redbook” all produced nothing. And there it was right on the cover of “Better Homes and Gardens”— “Spring’s Here; It’s Time to Spruce up Your Patio.” Years later I realized that a colon was the better choice, but the point had been made: Smart people knew their way around sentence construction.
Ever since I’ve been a grammar hound the same way a good mechanic is a carburetor hound. And God bless mechanics and tax accountants and plumbers and Uber drivers (should be Über), and billions more everywhere because they know and they do what I will never be capable of knowing or doing.
They say it takes a village. I’d say it takes at least a continent to get everything done. Each of us has a genius – an innate gift for appreciating the finer points of a discipline. It might be computers, it might be cooking, it might be carpentry, and it might be kindness. All are necessary to make the world go ‘round.
Well, look at this: I’m out of space; there’ll be more later.
Oh, and dreamboat Agent Erskine solved the case: The perp was a university professor. Crime doesn’t pay, but sometimes it educates.
– Dorothy
