Patterns of Poetry 12: punctuation

The 12th talk in the Patterns of Poetry talks (all under 5 minutes) is about punctuation. The two poems quoted are Emily Dickinson's 'I felt a Funeral in my Brain' and the late Edwin Morgan's 'Strawberries'. Click here for Victor Borge's 'Phonetic Punctuation' turn.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. The first 8 talks are available as a single podcast here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

CREEP 20

Number 20 in the series: Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public.

Despite saying we might lay the apostrophe issue down for a while, we just had to feature this multiple horror seen yesterday in Dundrum Shopping Centre. Yes, its true, its there over and over, and Bing! walk around the back and there its happening again, this time white on black. It hasn't arrived....

CREEP 18

Number 18 in the series: Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public.

Over the porridge at the breakfast table the other morning, KS spotted this apostrophic omission - Padraigs 1st cow is presumably well past heavens door by now.

Unless we get a particularly juicy one, this might be the last CREEP referring to an absent apostrophe (shooting punctuation fish in a barrel). But we thought you'd like, below, the fine 'Apostrophe Song' first:-

CREEP 15

Number 15 in the series: Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public. Previous examples have featured the famous intrusive apostrophe, but here's a familiar variation - that shy creature, the vanishing apostrophe, seen (or rather not seen) in Glendalough by our roving photographer, Professor H. Frog. Please do send us pics of interest...

CREEP 14

Continuing our series in the Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public, number 14 features a rare bird indeed, seen in Dublin: the letter 's' appears three times in a row, and in creeps (ha!) that nervous little apostrophe, nipping in just in case an 'e' gets there first.

CREEP 12

Many thanks to Adrian Weckler of the Sunday Business Post (Twitter: @adrianweckler) for giving us permission to use the photo as part of the Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public (inspired by the similarly-acronymed Nixon committee). He saw this in TCD, and his comment is below:-

CREEP 11

One of our field reporters, Fraser, spotted this recently. An interesting variation, the Delayed Apostophe Whammy: just when you think "Phew, at least they've avoided the intrusive apostrophe after HGV..."

CREEP 9

Strolling through the unIrish sunshine in Kilkenny yesterday, we came across another matter of concern (pictured) for the Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public. Our main concern here is not so much the all-too-familiar intrusive apostrophe in the first word, as the way that in the second, erroneous English punctuation has invaded a foreign language. In Italian, a grilled sandwich is a panino, plural panini, but now we apparently have something like, er, panini'ni. Coming shortly, a new series of posts called CREPI (Campaign for the Removal of Errors in Punctuation in Italian).

CREEP 8

The Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public has been eating out recently. Above, a County Wicklow eatery caters for that familiar religious rite - making sure that youngsters conform to the rules, and celebrate their induction thereto. Below, l'apostrophe intrusive from a distinctly fancier establishment in the centre of Dublin (to be fair, the food is excellent, whatever about the punctuation). Zut alors! (thanks to our CREEP representative in the field, Philip Russell, for the first photo).

CREEP 7

The Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public returns to the fray. Seen last night on Parnell Street, Dublin. At least poker's weren't being brandished.

CREEP 3

...comes fast on the heels of the previous post. Above, spotted in today's London Independent newspaper (back of the Arts and Books section), an ad for Cracks, the boarding school film shot partly in the College 18 months ago. Even on the original it's extremely difficult to read the attribution, but on minute inspection it turns out to be Dave Aldridge of BBC Radio 5 Live. So he can hardly be blamed, having spoken rather than written the words.

CREEP 2

Thanks to our Mod Lang colleague Fraser for spotting the latest CREEP violation (Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public), at our senior side,s rugby Shield final at DLSP this afternoon. Could be a matter of life and death.

Punctuation New's on Apostrophe's!!

In July last we reported on the local Guerrilla Punctuation Action Group (GPAG), who seemed to be inserting apostrophes on local signs during covert night-time raids.

Here's a site ('How to Use an Apostrophe') which explains clearly when to use and not to use those tricky little marks, and there's also Sue Palmer's Home for Abused Apostrophes. And here's a Flickr group in which you can see lot's of example's of egregiou's error's.

Guerrilla Punctuation Action Group?

In January 2008 we reported on the mysterious arrival of several apostrophes on the local road signs to the College. These corrected the egregious 'St Columbas College' official signs, and we pondered on who was responsible - the Punctuation Compliance Standards Department of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council? The Punctuation Militant Front? The Apostrophe Action Coalition?

Now it seems that our anonymous punctuation/public signage operative has been at work again. The two remaining signposts to the college to have avoided their rightful possessive apostrophe have been 'dealt with'. One, at the junction of Taylor's Lane and Whitechurch Road (right), had been removed for over a year while interminable road-widening took place. The other sign (left), at the junction of Grange Road and Brehon's Field Road (the road formerly known as the Green Route), is raised some 4.5 metres above the ground and from the photographic evidence appears to have been the greatest challenge to our nameless servant. Click on the photograph for a closer look.

Punctuation News

Boarders return tonight, and day boys and girls tomorrow morning, after our Exodus break.

Thankfully they will find it easier to locate the College now. Holding as we do to high standards, it has irritated many of us for some time that the local road-signs have referred to the apostrophe-less 'St Columbas College'. Now all but one of these signs have mysteriously sprouted the appropriate punctuation (see pictures below). Who should we thank - the Punctuation Compliance Standards Department of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council? The Punctuation Militant Front? The Apostrophe Action Coalition?

[In the sidebar is a link to Sue Palmer's Home for Abused Apostrophes, which is a fine resource dedicated to examples of that more common phenomenon, the Instrusive Apostrophe].

The last remaining offender

A newly punctuated sign

We will keep an eye on that last offender, and hope that the Language Liberation League strikes again. The local pub obviously also needs some help.