What I've Learned

what I’ve learned I think is
how everything under language
slips and slides and bites
and how in the end
language makes its excuses
and leaves for the beach
where every wave is new and gone

from ‘on nomenclature’ in Alasdair Paterson’s collection, The Governing of Empires (Shearsman 2010)

The Clown Wordle

I decided to give Wordle a go. The site can deliver any text you feed it as a ‘word-cloud’. I gave it the manuscript of my chapbook,The Clown of Natural Sorrow and the result is below. I must have used more similes than I thought.


If you click on the link below, it takes you to a larger version of the image:
title="Wordle: The Clown"> src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/111637/The_Clown"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

By the way, I'm told there are only a handful of copies left of The Clown. It would be good to sell out and, if you feel either tempted or altruistic, please place an order from the link to the book above. Cheers.

Meekings's or Meekings'

In a previous blog entry I used the possessive form – “Sam Meekings’s book.” I hated the sound of that and could hardly bear to write it. I notice that Matt went for “Sam Meekings’ book” in his comment.

Strunk and White open their book on English style with the injunction:

1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding ‘s.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles’s friend
Burns’s poems
the witch’s malice

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names ending in -es and –is, the possessive Jesus’, and such forms as for conscience’ sake…

However, English isn’t a static language. Increasingly, I see people using the apostrophe without an added –s with words which end on the letter –s. Are we leaving the awful sound of Meekings’s behind forever? In many ways, I hope so.

I know some people will throw up their arms and say, “Who cares! Lighten up!” Well, I care…

Undoubtedly

The English language is strange. For example, why can something be "undoubtable," and yet can't be "undoubtably" (as there's no such word) true ? We have to use "undoubtedly" - it's tricky, all too easy to slip up. I had to check my dictionary on that one, just to be sure.

Of course, to make matters even more complicated, there is also "indubitably."

I did a Google seach for "undoubtably" and got 448,000 links, although a handful of those were pointing out the misspelling.