Category: Blog

Punctuation: Why you’re all missing the point

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* Image via www.badlanguage.net

I’m becoming increasingly passionate about punctuation. No, really [deliberate use of comma].

I even spent ten minutes arguing about the placement of a full stop as part of a conference-call pitch to a tourist board recently. A comma, I insisted, just wouldn’t cut it. It had to be a full stop.

Maybe this grammatical grandstanding stems from years of marking undergraduate work in need of a good proofreader, or maybe it’s a grumpy-old-man reaction to the proliferation of typos creeping into articles online.

Either way, I find myself increasingly correcting semicolons, exterminating ellipses and battling with pedantic zeal my arch-nemesis: the exclamation mark.

So, when BBC 6Music presenter Gideon Coe announced a themed edition of his nightly show based around the concept of adventures in punctuation this week, I was tuning in before my old chief sub could sneer over my shoulder, “That should be an en dash.”

The show threw up a winning combination of great music and stylebook-testing punctuation pondering, such as the majesty of Nick Cave’s (Are You) The One I’ve been Waiting For? [brackets and a question mark] and the mysterious case of the missing question mark from The Smiths’ How Soon is Now.

It’s like the presenter said, announcing a track by the featured artist of the evening, Half Man Half Biscuit (Westward Ho! Massive Let-Down, since you ask):

“Punctuation is important.”

Well said, Gid. And, yes, the Devon village does come as a package with its symbiotic exclamation mark.

I’ll let that one go but, much as I love the music of Jenny Lewis, the gratuitous use of exclamation points (as our American cousins like to call them) in the title of the track Rise Up with Fists!! [see below] cannot be allowed to pass without a yellow card.

The listener-led discussion then turned to great punctuation abuses in rock, notably The REM album Lifes Rich Pagent.

The fourth studio album by the band, released in 1986 and featuring the track Fall on Me, is ominously missing an apostrophe to demonstrate the possessive.

It’s like David Marsh, another stickler for perfect punctuation and the man behind The Guardian‘s Mind Your Language blog, says:

“If only they had used an apostrophe, the meaning would have been clear.”

Of course this is nothing new.

Lynne Truss has been banging this particular discourse-inspired drum since the publication of her 2003 book Eats Shoots & Leaves.

I read it again recently and continue to admire her juxtaposition of scholarly research with deft, light touches of phrase.

But I fear Lynne and I could come to blows about those pesky exclamation marks.

Introduced by humanist printers in the 15th century, it was known as ‘the note of admiration’ until the 1800s and has been treated with caution by grammarians ever since.

Truss mounts a spirited defence of the exclamation mark and outlines a series of suitable uses, ranging from involuntary ejaculations (Phew! Lord love a duck!) to deflecting potential misunderstandings of irony (I don’t mean it!).

But, for me, the exclamation mark is the preserve of writers who simply try too hard. They don’t have the lexicon of language to make their point without honking like a deranged clown with a misfiring hooter.

It’s like Truss herself says:

“In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.”

Gideon Coe was far too fair-minded to boycott the exclamations during Punctuation Night. Indeed, Godspeed You! Black Emperor featured prominently in the evening’s dramatic coda.

But I think exclamation marks are – like Facebook – pure evil. Ban them, now!

What do you think about this post? Comment below.

Liked this? Try also X Marks the Spot.

Gazetteer

BBC 6Music: Gideon Coe

Bad Language: WTF

David Marsh: if you can’t use an apostrophe, you don’t know your shit

Daffodils

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The daffodils were stirring.

The winter had been long and cold; they had sought sanctuary in the darkness, preferring to hide away, rather than show their hand.

In the past year their delicate petals had been damaged, their stems twisted out of shape. They had wanted to make their voices heard.

That was, after all, their right but, instead, they had held their tongues.

They waited. Down, but not out. Hibernating.

Now they were stirring: pushing skywards, opening up, revealing their hand.

They knew their moment was coming when they felt the light shifting in the mornings and started to feel the strength returning to their fibres.

But, in the end, it was the most unexpected turn of events that gave them the true impetus to bloom.

The blond tresses scattered like wild flowers across the white pillow; the warmth of the embrace at the first light of day.

The daffodils weren’t afraid to reach out. Their patron saint’s day was coming and they would not be alone in emerging from the winter gloom.

They pushed higher, opening their petals to the air, turning their faces to the sun.

Spring was coming. Life moves on.

Alone at Xmas: Spare a thought for the single dads this festive season

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All fathers want to see their children open their presents on Christmas morning.

But thousands of dads across the UK will miss that moment this year.

A friend of mine, Richard, is one.

Having split from his partner earlier this year, he will spend Christmas day alone “drinking too much red wine and watching movies on Sky” before collecting his young children from their mother to spend New Year’s Eve with them at his place.

He talks about “just wanting to just get through it this year” but he’s not alone. From the divorced to the bereaved via fathers working away from home, thousands of men will miss that Christmas-presents morning this year.

National shame

According to a recent online survey by Samaritans, some 45 per cent of men felt sad or depressed at Christmas time; 37% of men admitted to feeling lonely, citing relationship and financial difficulties as their main sources of their anxiety.

And it’s not just older men. A separate survey, carried out for the BBC by market research company Comres, found that 18 to 24-year-olds are nearly as likely (30%) to feel lonely as those over 65 (31%).

The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt recently described the plight of the “chronically lonely” as a “national shame.”

“We have to move beyond the idea of men don’t talk, boys don’t cry,” says Joe Ferns, Executive Director of Policy, Research & Development at Samaritans. The organisation received 244,000 calls during the Christmas period last year and volunteers will man 201 UK branches over the festive period.

“We’re supposed to be modern men but, when we don’t cope, not coping becomes the biggest problem for us.”

“At Christmas,” he adds. “It’s even harder to hide from the reality of our feelings.”

Small steps

So how exactly can men get through it this year?

Peter Saddington, a Relate counsellor based in the Midlands, encourages men to reach out and take small, practical steps.

“Separated fathers could plan a Skype call for Christmas Day morning, then plan a second Christmas to make memories for your kids,” he advises.

Relate offers telephone and online counselling over Christmas, according to where you live, and increasingly advises individuals on relationship matters – not just couples trying to stay together.

“Men are just as emotional and upset about a family breakdown but, when they seek help, we often respond really well to counselling,” he adds.

“It helps them put aside the sadness aside and move forward.”

Mental health

As Christmas approaches this week, mental health professionals will be acutely aware that recent research shows male suicide rates are spiralling.

The Men’s Health Forum, a charity working to improve men’s health services, cite Department of Health figures indicating suicide is the single most common cause of death in men under 35. Of the 5,981 suicides in the UK in 2012, 4,590 cases were male according to the Office for National Statistics.

The Forum this month launched its Man MOT service, enabling men to contact an NHS GP via live text chat or email (it varies according to the day of the week).

“Men tend to put all their eggs in two baskets: work and wife.”

“Then, when a major life change comes, they haven’t nurtured the support networks that women traditional turn to,” explains Dr Luke Sullivan, a clinical psychologist involved with the project.

Dr. Sullivan is also working with the not-for-profit organisation Men’s Minds Matter to create a National Federation of Men’s Institutes to reduce isolation in men and provide a supportive environment to help men cope with challenging life events.

“Ultimately, you can close the door, hide away and think about what you’ve lost, or you can find a way to make it a bit easier, looking to the future and setting some simple goals,” he adds.

“It’s important to recognise that things will be different next year.”

Good will

I’m one of the lucky ones.

My divorce was finalised this year on the basis of a shared-parenting arrangement.

I had support during this process and I’ll pick up my daughters on Christmas Day morning this year to watch them open their presents before I cook the lunch.

I’ve invited Richard to join us.

After all, it is supposed to the season of goodwill to all men.

* This article first appeared on Telegraph Men under the headline Thousands of fathers will spend Christmas alone.

Gazetteer 

Men’s Health Forum

Men’s Minds Matter

Samaritans

Relate

 

Me and my OCD

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I’m sitting in a Chester café with the actor Ian Puleston-Davies, better known as Owen in Coronation Street.

We’re supposed to be chatting over coffee and bacon sandwiches but Ian can’t settle – his Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is playing up.

“I’m sitting here obsessing about whether my ear is clean, about the stains on the table and how close the guy behind me is sitting,” he explains, trying hard to conceal his agitation.

“It took me ages to just sit down at the table as I was afraid it would break my coccyx on the chair.”

Ian is a patron of OCD-UK, the national charity campaigning for support and treatment for sufferers, which marks OCD Awareness Week from today [October 13], an initiative designed to change inaccurate perceptions about OCD.

“Sometimes,” adds Ian, “it’s exhausting just getting through the day.”

According to figures from OCD-UK, there are some 750,000 people in the UK living with OCD, an anxiety-related condition characterised by frequent uncomfortable and obsessional thoughts.

Around 50 per cent of cases fall into the severe category. It can strike from young children to adults, regardless of gender or cultural background.

“OCD is the poor cousin of mental health in that people tend to joke about it and trivialise the suffering of those living with it.”

Ashley Fulwood, Chief Executive of OCD-UK, adds: “But it is a serious illness and it can lead to tragic consequences.”

Ian suffered his first experience of anxiety-indicted OCD behaviour aged just seven years old. He was on the football pitch at his primary school in North Wales when his classmates started to tease him for fiddling with flies while passing the ball.

After that, he was always the last one to be picked for the team.

“I still remember being in my bedroom and consumed with the anxieties I subsequently nicknamed my habits,” he says.

“I felt like an alien. The only clue to what was happening came from reading the problem page in my mother’s copy of Woman’s Own about housewives obsessively washing their hands.”

Ian wasn’t diagnosed with OCD until the age of 35 by a Harley Street therapist and suffered in silence for the intervening years.

“I was crippled by over-sensitivity to everything: contamination, fear of harm to myself, or others,” says Ian. “I was even terrified that if I got up too quickly in the morning, then I’d break my back.”

At his lowest point, he simply couldn’t get out of bed, an image he later created for the opening scene of the ITV drama, Dirty Filthy Love (2004), a story about a man struggling to understand his OCD, co-written by Ian and staring the Welsh actor Michael Sheen.

For Ian, OCD Awareness Week is about encouraging sufferers to reach out for support and treatment.

Men suffering from mental illness are, he sighs, generally less inclined to share the problem with their partners or mates.

“I’m angry at myself for being weak. I’m a husband and a father, the paternal protector, but at times I’m shrivelled in the corner stressing about a stain on the wall.”

“Sometimes I feel OCD has completely emasculated me,” he says.

But a range of treatments are now available – from local community support groups to Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), as well as the use of (SSRI) medication, an anti-depressant to control serotonin levels and reduce anxiety.

“Sufferers should seek help early as the longer you leave it, the worse it gets,” explains Professor Paul Salkovskis, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Bath.

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with OCD sufferers’ brains and the research shows a good proportion of sufferers will not just improve, but may eradicate the condition, with suitable treatment.”

“Like learning a new language,” he adds, “you can actually retrain the brain.”

Back in the café, Ian he has finished his coffee but his sandwich remains half untouched. “We live in anxious times and the anxiety within us as a society is growing,” says Ian. “I’m really concerned about how our children are increasingly susceptible to OCD.”

“But, ultimately, I have to beat OCD and find some peace,” he adds. “After all, I can’t to go to my grave with wet wipes.”

Gazetteer

OCD-UK

That’s OCD

This story was first published for Telegraph Men under the headline, Sometimes I feel OCD has completely emasculated me.