The Pedants' Revolt

An old friend once told me the following joke: "Who was the leader of the Pedants' Revolt? Which Tyler."

I think this is a joke which (or should that be "that"?) separates the population into two groups: those who get it and those who don't. If you don't get it, there is no hope for you. And if you do get it, there is no hope for you either, although for a different reason.

I offer this by way of introduction only because I was reminded again recently of the importance of dull discplines such as punctuation and sentence construction, and not only for those of us who live in non-English-speaking countries. (Just a little joke.)

Before sharing with you the example which got me thinking about this, I should re-iterate (why is it that no one ever iterates for the first time?) that - as explained in my message of 23 April - this is not a political site and has no axe to grind in that direction. Oh no. Despite the apparently political nature of the following example, The Referee's interest has nothing to do with the war on terror and everything to do with the proper use of the English language.

The Referee recently stumbled across the following news headline: "Bush: Sept 11 architect to be tried".

Not a particularly remarkable headline in itself, perhaps, but I couldn't help thinking that there is quite a lot one can do with that sentence just in terms of punctuation, even if the seven words are left untouched.

For example, "Bush, Sept 11: architect to be tried", involves only a couple of minor changes - losing a comma and moving a colon - but creates quite a different headline which might have less to do with terrorism than the President's level of satisfaction with structural changes to the West Wing.

There are, of course, some rather more straightforward changes one could make along the same lines, such as "Bush, Sept 11: architect to be tried?", if it wasn't clear whether the President was satisfied with the work or not.

Or, just by adding a couple of hyphons, "Bush, Sept 11: architect-to-be tried" suggests that the root of the problem might have been that the chap in question was not yet fully qualified.

But the most fun one could have with this - and I suspect you might be ahead of me here - would be "Bush, Sept 11 architect, to be tried". In that case, only three small changes - lose the colon and add a couple of commas - are all that's required to set off a wild conspiracy theory.

If a little comma can change the course of recent history, can we afford to ignore it? I think, not.