> > Trivial? Trivial? You deliberately trying to wind me up?
> > Go on like that and I'll shop you to the list moderator.
>
> Yeah, I know you've risen to that bait before. It mystifies me how an
> apostrophe can become something one can lose sleep over,
Well, find me one apostrophe in any poem by Tom Leonard.
OK, semi-seriously, there were two reasons for The Avoidance of the
Apostrophe (and I admit this is a very sixties thing, and must sound to you
yunguns like an argument over which variety of Lee-Enfield was best to use
in the Bore War).
One was general-polemic, that apostophes implied that the language used was
somehow a botched version of English. Linked into a total refusal to use
the word "dialect". OK, silly now, sure, but it seemed important to us
then. [Was too, but, he said parenthetically -- both stopped-at-the-borders
signifiers.]
The other was, oddly enough, connected with the Scots Style Sheet (1947),
and no wonder your poor poet wept -- if you were applying the SSS to the
work of someone who fought in the Language Wars, you were lucky all you got
was tears and you didn't have your guts raped by a rusty fishknife.
Basically, Lallans Poets Used Apostrophes.
I could expand, but I presume you get the point, Peter?
I'd add a third reason of my own. While even now, having burned all the
ideological detrius from my bones and even in certain limited circumstances
being prepared to sully my lips with the term "dialect", I still won't use
an apostrophe.
They're unnecessary.
I think a lot of the heat has left the issue since, finally, we won -- not
only every battle but the war. Who di they ken noo? Tom Leonard, James
Kelman, Alasdair Grey (Irvin Welsh). The victors get to write the history.
Be a damn sight more whinging and howling and pin-spinning around this issue
if we'd lost.
EndRant (for now)
> but having lost
> sleep over 'em in my time I know that this is possible. It doesn't seem
> ridiculous at the time, but it sure does on mature reflection.
How I feel too, Peter, in my saner moments -- but I still won't use them.
The Stone Dormouse.
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