What is it that makes some people react so strongly to apostrophes, while others don’t? Educational background is certainly part of it. If we have had apostrophes beaten into us in school, then we will defend them to the death. As one listener wrote to me, after I talked about punctuation in a programme for my Radio 4 English Now series in the 1980s: ‘I suffered for my apostrophes, which is why I get upset when I see people misusing them.’ Social and cultural background is a part of it too: if we were brought up at home in an apostrophic atmosphere, we will have assimilated our elders’ linguistic values – values that reflect the need to respect the conventions that society recognizes as Standard English. If we experienced a more relaxed personal punctuational history, we are less likely to feel strongly about these things, and will feel puzzled, confused, or angry when others harangue us for our supposed laxity.
That is why the Internet is at the centre of so many punctuation arguments these days. We are in the middle of a transitional period in which our experience of the written language is undergoing a radical shift. The Internet now contains more written language than in all the libraries of the world combined, and the screen (fixed or mobile) is the place where young people most often experience it. The apostrophe is but one of the features that provide us with a different linguistic experience when we read and write online, or send and receive text messages by phone, but changes in its usage were among the first features to be noticed. As with the hyphen, omission was fostered by aesthetics, ergonomics, and fashion: it looked better, made typing easier, and everybody else was doing it.
The Internet didn’t start these trends but it certainly reinforced them and speeded them up. And the constraints of the technology particularly affected the apostrophe, as this was one of the symbols that was excluded from the domain name system that provides us with our Internet addresses. The apostrophic identity of McDonald’s restaurants is clear; but online we have to use such addresses as
Media headlines about the Internet causing the ‘death of the apostrophe’ are premature. Electronic communication hasn’t been around long enough for us to see what kind of long-term linguistic impact it will have. At the moment there are plenty of apostrophes online, their frequency depending on the genre of Internet activity we’re looking at. They are infrequent in short messaging and instant messaging, for example, but still strongly present in blogs and websites. Their use in emails is very much determined by individual differences. Someone who begins an email to me with ‘Dear Professor’ is more likely to use apostrophes than someone who greets me with a ‘Hi Dave’.
Teachers have to cope with all this. They have to teach their students how to manage the apostrophe, which these days means guiding them towards an informed awareness of the stylistic differences that exist. At one extreme, we have extremely informal styles of communication where nonstandard English is routine and writers rarely use an apostrophe – and only when it’s absolutely essential to make a meaning clear. At the other extreme we have formal and informal styles of communication where Standard English is obligatory and the use of the apostrophe is motivated by the traditional rules governing letter omission (haven’t), possession (boy’s/boys’), and the avoidance of awkward juxtaposition (dot the i’s), and sanctioned by the recommendations of examining boards. In between, we have the areas where educated people, perfectly capable of using apostrophes, choose to drop them for professional reasons, such as achieving a ‘clean’ look in a brand-name or a street name. Why they do so makes for an interesting teacher–student discussion.
This is all part of the aim to make students masters of punctuation (as I’ll discuss further in the Appendix), by making them aware of what is going on, so that they can make an informed decision about when it is essential to use the apostrophe (if they want to avoid social criticism or get poor marks) and when it is optional. Any course of study should also make them aware of special uses of the apostrophe. A few fixed phrases require it, such as will-o’-the-wisp and ne’er-do-well, or allow it as a popular option, as in rock ’n’ roll and fish ’n’ chips. Distinctive pronunciations give rise to it, such as colloquial forms (goin’, ’cos, Cap’n) or poetic variants to satisfy the metre of a line (o’er, e’er, ’gainst). There are unique cases: the nautical pronunciation of forecastle resulted in fo’c’sle or the unique triptych fo’c’s’le; and there is nothing else in English quite like o’clock. An abbreviated word prompts an apostrophe until it becomes established, as in ’flu, ’phone, ’bus, and ’cello, all common in Victorian times. Hallow-e’en has morphed into Halloween. Usage is divided over whether to use an apostrophe for years: ’06 for 2006. Purely graphic shortenings can be seen in tables and other locations where space is at a premium, such as Ass’n for Association.
No other punctuation term has generated so much of a vocabulary as this one. The online Urban Dictionary provides a representative collection at apostrophe, which it defines as follows:
Particularly useful piece of English punctuation for making yourself look stupid. You can do this in three main ways: 1. Putting an apostrophe in when it’s completely unnecessary. 2. Leaving it out when it’s needed. 3. Putting it in the wrong place.
This is accompanied by entries describing various acts of misuse: apostrophe abuse, apostrophe catastrophe, apostrophe atrocity, apostrophe crime, and apostrophe-fuck. Associated conditions include apostrophapathy (‘the state of being of someone who just doesn’t care about apostrophes’), apostrophatarded (‘unable to use apostrophes correctly’), apostrophe paranoia (‘condition suffered by English teachers and others who see missing and misplaced apostrophes [in places where they are actually correct]’), apostrophobia (‘fear of the misuse of apostrophes’), apostrophitis (‘the epidemic tendency to insert apostrophes where they do not belong’), apostrophury (‘feeling that is evoked in grammarians and other sensible people when they see apostrophes misused’), and the politically correct apostrophically challenged (‘the inability to make proper use of the apostrophe’). I missed apostrophilia (‘love of apostrophes’), but otherwise this seems a pretty comprehensive list. Urban Dictionary also recommends apostrophectomy (‘the removal of superfluous apostrophes’).
After all this, it was a relief to read about Apostrophy – a New Jersey rock band formed in 2005.
30
Marks of inclusion (or exclusion): round brackets
The hierarchy of levels introduced in Chapter 14 is the organizing principle of the punctuation system. It has taken us from the most general considerations of layout and paragraphing down to the detailed level of hyphens and apostrophes. But there is one kind of punctuation that was not included in this treatment, because it operates outside the hierarchy – or, more precisely, in parallel with it. Its function, like most other marks, is to separate, but it is different from them in that it works in pairs, to show one unit being included within another. (Or, from a different perspective, to show that a unit is being excluded from the surrounding text.) There are two main types: round brackets (also called parentheses) and quotation marks (Chapter 31).
Parentheses is an awkward term, as it refers both to the mark and to the content within the mark: parentheses contain parentheses. Printers use a shortened form: parens. In everyday use, the popular term is round brackets – in British English often shortened to brackets. Curved brackets is a less-used alternative, as is the Latin term lunulae (‘little moons’). Some sort of adjectival qualification is needed, though, in view of the occurrence of the other types of bracket described below, and in view of the fact that, when American English uses brackets on its own, the word usually refers to square brackets.
The main value of round brackets is that they allow anything to be included within anything. Here are some of the things that can happen
(all taken from earlier chapters of this book):
a sentence within a paragraph (Spoiler alert.)
a sentence within a sentence This anticipates the important role given to semantics in the twentieth century (see Chapter 11).
a clause within a sentence The extract also shows the presence of other forms of punctuation (which I’ll discuss in the next chapter).
a phrase within a clause the result can be ambiguity or unintelligibility (from a semantic point of view)
a word within a phrase Book 3 of his (Latin) work is …
Dr Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) …
a prefix or suffix within a word to our addressee(s)
Clearly, round brackets offer writers the chance to ‘say two things at once’. It would be possible to write, in the last example, ‘to our addressee or addressees’, or, in the previous example, ‘Book 3 of his work, which was written in Latin …’. The brackets allow increased compactness of expression, and are thus likely to be frequent in genres (such as academic prose and poetry) where writers are articulating meaning of some complexity.
The text they contain is usually short. It’s possible for a parenthetic remark to continue for more than a line, or even to contain more than one sentence, but this can make a text more difficult to process, as the reader has to keep the main sentence structure and meaning in mind while coping with the parenthetic content:
The importance of having the equipment checked by two independent companies (as recommended by the 2012 UK government report on Services to Industry and since confirmed by further reports in France and Canada – see the paper by Richardson in this volume) is still not always recognized.
In such cases, the ‘magic number seven’ principle (Chapter 24) operates again. Our working memory finds it difficult to cope when put under such pressure. There’s no grammatical obligation to keep the parenthetic content short, but the longer it gets, the more we may find ourselves having to read the sentence twice (at least!) to grasp its meaning.
Similarly, the use of round brackets within round brackets is something writers generally avoid. There’s no problem if the nested item is a single word or date, but as soon as the content lengthens, the reader is presented with an undesirable processing load:
(as discussed by Jones (1990) in his influential essay)
(as discussed by Jones (in an influential essay first published in 1990) and other physicists)
Two levels of nesting are rare, and usually criticized as bad style:
(as discussed by Jones (in an influential essay (now available online) first published in 1990) and other physicists)
Pragmatic factors also intervene. Some people hate the look of adjacent parentheses:
(as discussed by Jones (2010))
Square brackets (see below) are sometimes used to address this problem. They do reduce any semantic confusion, but the aesthetic considerations remain:
(as discussed by Jones [in an influential essay first published in 1990] and other physicists)
(as discussed by Jones [2010])
Round brackets are not the only kind of correlative punctuation marks. Commas and dashes can also be used in pairs, as can quotation marks, to show an included unit. As a result, we have a choice of semantic effects, which can be explored by comparing the use of the four forms in the same sentence:
The train, arriving late as usual, was full of tourists.
The train – arriving late as usual – was full of tourists.
The train (arriving late as usual) was full of tourists.
The train ‘arriving late as usual’ was full of tourists.
The least obtrusive mark, and semantically the most neutral choice, is the comma: this enables a writer to remark on the train being late without any further implication. The other three choices each add something extra.
The dashes, as already discussed in Chapter 17, suggest an informal or dramatic spontaneity that isn’t present in the other options. We can readily imagine the remark being spoken in a tone of voice that would express the speaker’s attitude (of irritation, frustration …).
The round brackets convey no emotional content, simply suggesting that the remark is of secondary importance – an explanatory or amplificatory aside – which might be omitted without the general tenor of the passage being seriously affected. In speech, the parenthetic remark is typically less prominent – spoken with lowered pitch and reduced loudness. The punctuation is drawing the reader’s attention to the fullness of the train, not the lateness.
The quotation marks, as their name suggests, indicate that the remark is an allusion to some other text, spoken or written. The result is extra prominence: the sentence is now more about the lateness of the train than its fullness.
Usage has changed over the centuries. In Shakespeare’s day, round brackets had a wide range of functions (including those now expressed by the dash), most of which are no longer used. We find them, for example, enclosing a term of address, an interjection, a subordinate clause, or a comment aimed at the listener (all examples from the First Folio):
We are not (Sir) nor are we like to be
But (ah) I will not, yet I loue thee well
Enter Ferdinand (bearing a log)
The one, I haue almost forgot (your pardon:)
Modern editions would either omit the brackets or replace them by commas or dashes.
Modern uses of round brackets are also anticipated in the First Folio, as when they are used to clarify the semantic structure of a passage. Look at this extract from Two Gentlemen of Verona (1.1.96):
I (a lost-Mutton) gaue your Letter to her (a lac’d-Mutton) and she (a lac’d-Mutton) gaue mee (a lost-Mutton) nothing for my labour.
This is much clearer than the repeated use of commas (which is how the Penguin edition of the play prints it):
I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced mutton; and she, a laced mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing for my labour.
By contrast, the Arden edition of the play keeps the brackets.
In certain circumstances, the set of correlative choices reduces to two. This happens when the item to be included is a sentence.
The train (I call it a train even though it had only one carriage) was full of tourists.
Commas are now impossible, because they are never used to end independent sentences. The conflict of functions would make for a challenging sequence:
The train, I call it a train even though it had only one carriage, was full of tourists.
Care also has to be taken when round brackets are accompanied by other punctuation marks. Here, usage has changed over the centuries. In the First Folio we see cases like ‘(your pardon:)’ above, where the colon is included before the final bracket. Today, the convention is to place any following punctuation outside:
I managed to catch the train (the direct one), which meant I got to my interview on time.
I managed to catch the train (the direct one).
A common mistake in immature writing is to put the mark inside – or, if the parenthesis contains a sentence expressing a statement, to overpunctuate:
I decided to go by bus (the train was very expensive.).
It’s possible to use question marks and exclamations before the final parenthesis, but this presents pragmatic problems:
I decided to go by bus (never by train!).
I decided to go by bus (will John approve?).
Two marks are necessary, because they perform different functions. But not everyone likes the look of such sequences, especially when the main sentence requires the same mark as the one within the parentheses:
I decided to go by bus (never by train!)!
Could I go by bus (is there a direct bus?)?
Formal styles of writing tend to avoid them.
Round brackets today also have a limited set of specialized functions, enabling us to succinctly identify examples, references, and cross-references, as in the citations to plays throughout this book; numbers or letters i
n a list, as in (a), (b), (c); and alternative forms of a word, as in O(h). They also, of course, have a range of technical functions, especially in mathematics and programming, and individual conventions will be encountered in reference publishing. A dictionary or index, for example, may use round brackets to identify a particular kind of information:
overcome 3.19; (~ ŵith) 16.69
overhang (verb) 3.18
We should also note the unusual case of an unpaired usage, when lower-case letters are used to identify items in a list:
a)
b)
c)
The need to differentiate kinds of included information led to the development, chiefly from the eighteenth century, of other kinds of bracket. Most of the modern uses are technical. Mathematics and programming, in particular, couldn’t do without them. Nor could phonetics, as different kinds of bracket are used to distinguish units in speech and writing: the sound [t] in square brackets, the phoneme /t/ in slashes, the grapheme
[ ] Square brackets, also called crotchets, or simply (especially in the US) brackets, are chiefly encountered when a writer wants to modify a quotation (omitting or adding content) or to make a clarification. I’ve used them several times in this book: omission: ‘The important point […] is that nobody is excluded.’
addition: ‘[some authors] point their Matter either very loosely or not at all’
Making a Point Page 25
