FOOLISH ENDEAVOURS

It seems that one of the biggest faux pas one can commit online is to become the kind of "Grammar Nazi" who goes around pointing out the shortcomings of other people's spelling or punctuation. People will blame predictive text, character limits, and a whole host of other reasons before simply admitting that they made a mistake or just didn't know better.

So, when I got up on Saturday in a bit of a bad mood, and just happened to get highly irritated by a posting from my local town's data feed that we should enjoy our day "Whatever your doing" and felt the need to rant to nobody in particular about the apostrophe in "You're" being there to emphasise the point that it was a reduction of "You are" I was, quite rightly, knocked back by people who are fully aware of just how picky I was being, even though I was, of course, perfectly correct to point it out.

It happens all the time, and each time I see it, it annoys the hell out of me.

My English teacher, Mr Watson, would have been so proud.

I still remember his short and rather ranting lecture which he gave during one English lesson about the use of "It's" and "Its" in a sentence, and it's stayed with me all these years.

Just as I remember Mrs Machin's three bugbears which made it into her weekly spelling tests at primary school: N-e-c-e-s-s-a-r-y, I-m-m-e-d-i-a-t-e-l-y, and S-u-c-c-e-s-s-f-u-l...

And Mr Williams in History making a point of underscoring the second "a" in "parliament" every single time... although I never did understand another teacher's explanation of the sentence "Andrew had had had had had had his dinner..."

Some people really don't believe such things are important. Although, if you've ever worked in pre-press and advertising, and you've had to have your output proof-read, you'll perhaps have a very different point of view. After all, if you get a customer's telephone number incorrect, the whole point of their advertisement is somewhat lost.

I worked with a woman once who didn't think these things mattered, and she would stand around getting very shouty if anyone pointed out one of her errors. She'd been brought up in one of those schools which believed that "creativity" mattered far more than "accuracy" when it came to writing, and would tell us so in no uncertain terms.

Interestingly (and perhaps ironically), she left to train as a teacher before the "proof-reading" regime proper came in at work...

Of course, pointing out other people's grammatical errors is a mildly dangerous occupation when you are putting words out into the world yourself. Straight away you're setting yourself up for every Tom, Dick and Harriet to point out your own mistakes in that "pride comes before a fall" manner we seem to have culturally embraced to knock down anyone who tries to maintain that standards in grammar (amongst other things) are actually quite important if we are all to understand each other, and which, to my mind, demonstrates a recent trend towards, I believe, the wholesale de-intellectualisation of our society in general.

Which brings us to "Endeavour" the rather well-made "prequel" series to "Inspector Morse" set in the 1960s. We've recently been working our way through the DVDs and still enjoying them, despite usually remembering "Whodunnit" from when we first watched them on broadcast, and the misfit character of Morse triggering far too many parallels with my own particular lot in life for my liking...

The one tiny, almost insignificant thing that does annoy me about the programme, however, and has done since I first watched the episodes on TV, is the kerning between the letters "A" and "V" on the titles. The spacing really, really does need adjusting because the gap is visually just far too wide. It's a subtle thing, but it doesn't half irritate you once you notice it.

Well, if you're me, anyway...

I know that in this computer-led age, few people worry about such things now, but, once upon a time, such things used to be important, and my old Typography lecturers would have gone mad if I'd let that one go through in the days of Letraset, metal type or calligraphy.

Meanwhile, and on a totally unrelated note, the particular episode of "Endeavour" we happened to be watching, "Rocket", also triggered a conversation which went something like this:

"There's that actress Maimie McCoy, the one you said looks a little bit like our friend ____"

"Did I say that? I thought you said it..."

"No, it was definitely something you said..."

"Well, to be fair, it does sound like the sort of thing I'd've said…"

"...but, I mean, how would I know what she looks like now? I haven't seen her in person in nearly five years. Not since that time that she came to the house with her ____... I mean, I may have picked you both up in the car at some point since, although I'm pretty sure that I haven't, and I'm fairly sure that her visit here was the last time I actually saw her..."

This, of course, set me thinking about how many people I never get to see any more.

Okay, it's probably not the done thing to socialise privately with your partner's friends, but there are people who I consider to be my own "close friends" who I haven't seen in person in any year starting with the numbers 2 and 0, and there is one friend who I last saw on the day of the Concorde crash. There are people I know who are about to move into the second house they've lived in since I last saw them, and whose current home I've never been in.

So how does this sort of thing allow itself to happen? How can whole decades disappear without me managing to actually see the people I supposedly care about?

Maybe that's why I enjoy "Endeavour" so much... Perhaps one day I'm hoping to revisit my own past and watch my own "prequel" with the benefit of hindsight...?