Updating English (again)

Strict grammarians aside, I like to think that many people understand that English is a vibrant and adaptive language. Heaven only know I have my trials keeping up with it sometimes (nasty side-effect of being a writer). With the advent of electronic text communication, I believe we’ve entered into an amazing era of linguistic experimentation and adaptation. To that end, I’d like to once again throw in my 2¢ worth (though it should be more like 2-Krugerrands worth, for these are gems of high value, indeed).

Neutral Third Person Singular Pronouns

This is one I really actively push in the hope that y’all will latch onto it, make it your own, and spread this sanity to the masses. Some of you who follow my blogs on fictional and nonfictional sentient artificial life have seen how useful this set of pronouns can be. Ey, em, and eir pretty much cover it and are easy to incorporate. Since I’ve already written on this, I’ll just post the link (Genderless Pronouns – Ey, Em, and Eir) and move on.

With school starting up again in the U.S., now is definitely the perfect time to start pushing the envelope.

Lay/Lie

You know, I’ve pretty much had it with “lay” and “lie”. In all practical ways, they are nothing short of needlessly confusing. Sure, many will point out that “lay” is for an object and “lie” is for a person (I’m simplifying, of course). That might not be so bad if “lay” wasn’t an option for both.

So, I got to thinking (uh-oh), is any useful information conveyed to necessitate having to deal with this annoying conjugation? Some will point to sit/set as an equivalent, but it isn’t an exact match. It can be argued that sit/set has a greater distinction between the words than does lay/lie.

I say that we should just make lay/lie synonymous. Even now, what you mean is often gotten from context and not grammar. I mean, how is it not confusing that if I lay a blanket on the bed, it continues laying there, but if I lay a child on a bed, it continues lying there? What if I lay a sentient robot on the bed? What happens then?

No…the distinction has out-lived its usefulness. Time to stop worrying about it.

Emoticons

I know a lot of people still bristle with them, but I’ve loved emoticons since they first appeared. Being a smart-ass, they’ve been a life-saver for me in those times when written English simply can’t adequately convey my linguistic playfulness.

Since not every device can display graphics, I’m still a proponent of the punctuation-based emoticons as well as the relative brevity of the sideways version favored in the West versus the horizontal version favored in some of the East.

Quotations

Americans have this so screwed up. Let’s make it easy: if it isn’t in what you are quoting, do NOT put it between the quotation marks. It creates inaccuracy and can be confusing. Stop it. Makes no sense.

Capitalization

It’s time to do away with a couple of aspects of capitalization: the letter “I”, and the start of sentences.

Capitalizing “I” does not convey any additional information. Seems sort of silly to make this one letter so special. And if it’s supposedly about accenting the individual, then why aren’t “ME” and “MY” also capitalized?

As for sentences: back in the day, before punctuation was used, capitalizing the first word of a sentence made sense. It help separate things. But now, with punctuation having blossomed into its full-flowered glory, capitalizing the first sentence word is simply redundant. What do we lose if we lose these capitals? Nothing.

Getting back to quotations: the convention is to capitalize the first word in a quotation even if it wasn’t capitalized in the original. Again, this creates an inaccuracy (and shows how desperately screwed up the American quotation system is).

What would I keep? Capitals for proper names, acronyms, and some abbreviations. Beyond that, they should only be used for emphasis (i.e., SHOUTING) and decoration.

Titles

The 1970s introduced a marvelous convention to English: “Ms.” For too long we had been vexed by having to guess what a woman’s marital status was while the males among us got off with a non-committal “Mr.” My preference is to drop the period (as we often drop the hyphen in compound words), but people seem to be very attached to those little dots.

I’d like to extend this consolidation one more step and not only take away the marital status, but also the gender. Since English is unashamed at taking from other languages and molding it into our own, I propose using “San”. We can use “San” on its own as a substitute for “Sir or Madam”, and we can use it as a suffix for proper names: Leslie-san, Derek-san, etc.

Dots, Crosses, and Slashes

Whenever I look at small “i” and “j”, I can’t help wonder if we really need to have those dots there? It’s not like a diacritic in many languages that give pronunciation information. Nope. These are just decorative dots. Can we get rid of them?

In this vein, I’d like to propose some small changes to existing letters to make them less confusing. People who constantly work with a mix of letters and numbers often adopt some conventions so as to make their intentions clear. I’d like to see this extended into general use in both written and printed forms.

Generally, these changes involve making similar forms distinct. For example, it is all too easy to confuse the letter “O” with the number “0″. The common convention is to slash the zero. (top line).

Lowercase “L” is often confused with the simple “1″. Sometimes the “1″ will be drawn full serifed with both hat and base, but often the hat is enough.

Obviously, with the hat, a “1″ can easily be confused with a “7″, especially when handwritten. The solution here, again very common among programmers, is to cross the seven.

For the same reason, “Z” and “2″ are kept distinguished by crossing the letter “Z”.

These are simple changes that make a world of difference in comprehension in any number of alphanumeric situations. (Remember that last time you had to copy a serial number and you didn’t know if it was a “O”or a “0″?)

The Schwa

I’m not a great speller. You know something that irks me no end? Whether a word should end in “-ible” or “-able”. There are other cases, but that is the one that comes immediately to mind. I ask again, does it really make any difference? I can’t immediately recall a pair of words that are otherwise identical except for the preceding of the “ble” by an “a” or an “i”. It’s confusing.

I propose the schwa. The non-committal vowel sound that is used with great abandon by all who can’t remember which vowel it’s supposed to be. Let’s just schwa it, or compromise and say that either of “-ible” and “-able” is acceptible…er, acceptable.

Wrapping Up

And that’s a good tip to this iceberg (for now). While these are all important, the pronoun one is definitely my Cause with a capital “cause”. Please spread the word on that one and start using them in your own works. Change only happens when you act.