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All documents will be spelt (or do I
mean spelled) correctly, and grammatical. I will be the arbiter of correct
spelling. These spellings will be banned: color, aluminum. Some English
spellings (eg cheque) will be imposed to make Americans suffer for calling
their language "English" and our language "British English" (spit).
In the meantime, where there are correct alternate spellings sometimes I use
the English spelling (we practise at a practice and buy a licence so that we
are licensed), sometimes I use the American spelling (yes, I realise
the inconsistency), sometimes I don't know the difference and sometimes I
don't care.
Arguments and appeals against this and other laws below may be made
here. Witty and other well-made pleas may be
produced below. People deliberately breaking these laws to wind me up will
be sent here. (I
can't believe that's such a confusing front page.)
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Apostrophe use will be restricted to those who have passed the Standard Apostrophe Usage Test.
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Exclamation
marks will be rationed to no more than one every twenty sentences. All text
editors will regard two or more exclamation marks together as an error and
automatically correct the problem.
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txt mssgs wll b ablshd.
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All sentences
will start with a capital letter, as will people's and companies' names.
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Date formats will change to yymmdd
format to be logical and consistent and to sort correctly in directory
views. In the meantime, I use the English date format dd/mm/yy except where
obvious.
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The word
"literally" will be used correctly. (Note to London open-top tour buses: the
office of the Lord Mayor of the City of London does not date back literally
millions of years.) The phrase "light year" will never be used as a measure
of time (it is actually a very large distance) and the phrase "quantum leap"
will not be used to mean a big step forward (as it is the displacement of an
electron within an atom and hence something very small). Windows will be for
looking through in the real world, or for looking at in the computer world;
they will never be quantities of time nor measurements of opportunity.
Similarly envelopes will only be used for putting things in or writing on
the back of, they will not be abstract sizes to be pushed or expanded.
The word "commence" will be abolished.
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Politicians,
newsreaders and other pedants will be forced to sensibly split infinitives
and not absurdly to mangle the language.
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Chairs will
not run meetings. They may be sat on. This is nothing to do with combating
political correctness (laudable though that aim may be); it's merely to keep my stomach in order.
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Technical user guides will be prevented from
claiming that a feature allows a user to do something when it
enables the thing.
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Keyboards will generate a mild
electric shock when the following are typed: "try and", "thankyou".
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The following
books will be required reading in primary schools: