And then the double letters started cropping up. All day. They cropped up just now when I tried to type misspelt with a single internal ‘s’. Ever since I was repeatedly told to Never Eat Cakes Eat Salmon Sandwiches And Remain Young (Necessary) I’ve remembered to keep from that untidy looking double ‘c’. But these two threw me completely: Rec(c)ommendation, and Instal(l)ment.  I mean – if you install something, surely it’s an installment? Garh!

And it goes the other way…who’d have thought “aggrieved” would need that double g? Odd, odd, odd.

The worst thing is, after all of this, all I want to reach for is a Diction(n)ary.

I’m standing up on a mountainside,
And there are hundreds of people coming up from behind,
And there are hundreds of people who have gone ahead,
And they keep dropping these rocks on my head, and

I keep on dodging them, I keep on stepping aside,
And I keep thinking: ‘If that rock had a hit me, I could have died,
Standing here on this hill,
And I’m still not sure where I’m running to.’

And there’s too far left to run
And there’s not enough time to walk
And it hurts my knees to jog
So I’m going to sit down and talk

So I’ve been thinking to myself, ‘What is it we have here?
When the sun comes up will it be more clear?
And will all of our sweat and our toil,
Finally shuffle us off the mortal coil?

‘And when we finally get to the top,
Will there be anything left but one steep, swift drop?
Jack and Jill down the hill we’ll fall,
And it’s all been for nothing at all.’

And there’s too far left to run
And there’s not enough time to walk
And it hurts my knees to jog
So I’m going to sit down and…

Talk about this, let’s talk this through,
There’s enough room here on this ledge for me and you
And maybe we can build ourselves a roof
So the rocks won’t come tumbling through.

And there’s too far left to run
And there’s not enough time to walk
And it hurts my knees to jog
So I’m going to sit down and talk.

“Let no discredit grace your name,
I must be wrong, there is no shame,
But I wonder if I had your fame,
Would my ideas still look the same?

“Then tragedy falls, I meant no harm,
If your love dies, my love starts burning,
Oh so hot, my love will burn,
Oh world take head, you must start learning,
That less knowledge means more power,
And not always for the good is your yearning:
You can’t stand aside from the dance of life,
But if you stand real still, the world’s still turning.”

So Judas said to Jesus Christ,
“I don’t think that you’ve been doing it right,
Your teachings have shown me the light
But the way things are you’re going to start a fight.

“Let no discredit grace your name,
I must be wrong, there is no shame,
Oh but I wonder if I had your fame,
Would my ideas still look the same?

“Then tragedy falls, I meant no harm,
If your love dies, my hell starts burning,
Oh so hot love, and I must burn,
Oh world take heed, you must start learning,
That less knowledge means more power,
Not always for the good is your yearning,
You can’t stand aside from the dance of life,
But if you stand real still, the world’s still turning.”

So Lennon said to McCartney,
“I don’t like how you’ve been copying me,
You mess my songs around you see,
Then you sing them in much too high a key,

“Let no discredit grace your name,
I’m a jealous guy, I don’t have your range,
But I wonder if you had my fame,
Would your ideas still look the same?”

McCartney looked him dead in the eye
And said, “La-dee-dee-da-da-da, my-oh-my,
I love you John I’ve loved you all my life,
But stop acting like you’re Jesus Christ.

“Then tragedy falls I meant no harm,
If your love dies my wings start soaring,
Oh so hot love, my Jet must burn,
Oh world take heed, you must start learning,
That less knowledge, means more power,
Not always for the good is your yearning,
You can’t stand aside from the dance of life,
But if you stand real still the world’s still turning.”

These lyrics are interesting to write out because they’re full of extended speech. It caused me to roll out some of the more obscure details of speech mark usage – like not closing on the end of a paragraph if the speaker continues, but reopening them on the new paragraph. Oh the grammatic geekery…

The question is – did I just end-punctuate that sentence, or not?

It looks more than a little odd to end on two characters that most of us read as a face or emotion, and then to put a full stop. Especially as those two characters are almost invariably punctuation marks themselves. But ever increasingly, in the media most of us use to communicate and express ourselves most often (ie on a machine, using a keyboard of some type, probably online, and either in a blog, email or text message), we find the usage of emoticons seeping into the acceptable spectrum. And when something becomes ‘acceptable’, rules will start to govern its usage.

Personally, it irks me no end when somebody ends a sentence with BOTH an emoticon AND a punctuation mark. I’m a pedant, evidently, with my own set of unpublished rules, but something about three or four pieces of punctuation piling up on each other to contrary purposes really gets to me. It’s not that it’s incorrect: any sentence with an emoticon in it is going to be ‘incorrect’ by traditional standards. It’s just plain untidy.

Oh well, all of this simply from reading somebody’s status update on twitter. It’s a marvel how the grumpy old man surfaces at the smallest of hints. I’ll probably return to the topic of grammar and txtspk, they’re close to the heart of an English Literature graduate and lover of etymology, perhaps I’ll try to write an essay with no vowels or punctuation

UPDATE: Before posting this, I didn’t realise that either wordpress or most browsers would render my emoticons as actual smiley faces. Which kind of tidies up the messiness I was talking about. But they do looks cute. I’d code the m in as characters if I was a full geek, but I’ve not earned those stripes yet…