There’s a title to set your pants ablaze. Thanks firstly to Hot Wheels for correcting my spectacular error with the twenty-four-hour clock in my IKEA post. Thanks secondly to Tomodachi at Susurration for drawing his readers’ attention to the ‘Blogrollicity of two of us on his list simultaneously losing it in the aforementioned shop. Despite Random Acts of Reality being run by a manly, panic-proof paramedic/ambulance man, its proprietor had to take his mum along. Mind you, he is a cockney.
Further to Norm’s question a while back, yes, my use of an apostrophe and a capital letter at the front end of “‘Blog” is pretty pedantic, but ‘Blogging is, believe it or not, still a minority pursuit and I want to help the innocent with the term by at least giving them a clue to its etymology. I am absolute stickler for capitalizing “Web”—of which there is one—to distinguish from “web”, of which there are many (including one inside the windscreen of my car). “Weblog” begins with a capital “Web”. “Quaint” this may be, but I am not afraid of quaint. When I’m not at a keyboard, I write with a fountain pen, albeit a transparent plastic fountain pen. I have only recently started dropping the apostrophe from the beginning of “phone” and still occasionally put one in front of “plane” (as in “aeroplane”). At least I don’t put a diaeresis (not umlaut) in “cöoperate”.
Now don’t start picking faults with this post because I don’t have time to spellcheck or proof it: I’ve got to go home to meet the IKEA delivery lorry.
“I don’t have time to spellcheck or proof it”
Obviously not: as in ‘”Quaint” this maybe…’
There’s always one, isn’t there?
I have recently reverted to fountain pens. My PDA has been sold on ebay and has been replaced with a black moleskin notebook and Bauhaus-style Rotring 600 fountain pen – now that isn’t quaint.
Anthony, I too switched to the Moleskine/fountain pen combo – except that it’s a Parker 45 with the smallest available nib and blue-black quink. Doesn’t bleed through the paper, see. That, plus an antique filofax. Damian’s Lamy is a very nice piece of kit too. I wonder which D considers the more dull, IKEA-chat or stationery discussions?
Odd how the smallest things affect life. I have added you to my favourites just because you use the same pen as me, although mine is the metallic gray version. Just to make this even duller my employers won’t buy my refills and just answer “why don’t you get a Parker?”. Grrrr.
Put apostrophes wherever you like (within reason), but couldn’t you make them real apostrophes, rather than opening single quotation marks? ; )
And while we’re at it:
the hyphen in “”a-blaze” indicates what, exactly?
“siaw Says”? Nope, “says”.
We could spend hours doing this, and maybe someone would be mad enough to pay us to do it.
Oh … hang on a minute, we do, and they are.
Funny old world, isn’t it?
“”? Petard, hoist by.
Coats …
You’re all pedants…..
James wrote:
Definitely IKEA. The cultivation of a stationery fetish is the mark of a civilized (wo)man. University entrance interviews should begin with the question “What are your favourite writing implements and why?”
siaw:
There’ll all the fault of the bloody ‘Blogging software (except for the “a-blaze” thing, of course) and the only way around them (apart from rewriting WordPress and the plug-ins I use) is to type fancy HTML entity codes manually. Even I can’t be bothered to do that any more. Believe me, I share your pain about the opening single quotes though.
What are you Damian, a sub? You remind me of the HiFi World sub who uses ‘speaker to denote the fact that “loud” has been elided.
Subs don’t give tight bass.
I think the apostrophe should be read as “new-fangled”. it also implies a cardigan.
I was beginning to think I was the only person on the planet who capitalised “Web”. Now I feel better. Or worse. One or the other.
Talking of subs, I think Maureen Lipman accidentally said rather more about the sex lives of the British than she intended yesterday:
Yes, well, that would be exactly what he wanted, wouldn’t it?