Speaker 1: Guess what, mango? What's that will? So you know how
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens was known for being wordy, Right, how do
Speaker 1: you mean? All right, we'll just listen to the first
Speaker 1: sentence of a Tale of Two Cities, and I know,
Speaker 1: you know the very beginning of this, but I had
Speaker 1: forgotten what this whole sentence was like. So it was
Speaker 1: the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Speaker 1: It was the age of wisdom. It was the age
Speaker 1: of foolishness. It was the epic of belief. It was
Speaker 1: the epic of incredulity. It was the season of light,
Speaker 1: it was the season of darkness. It was the spring
Speaker 1: of hope, it was the winter of despair. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's honestly barely half the sentence. It just keeps going
Speaker 1: and going. So he's basically the king of run on sentences,
Speaker 1: is what you're saying. Well, yes, but here's what I
Speaker 1: learned recently, Like, it's no surprise that Dickens rambles, but
Speaker 1: actually i'd heard that it was because he was getting
Speaker 1: paid by the word. Yeah, I mean he wrote those
Speaker 1: serialized novels and magazines, so that kind of makes sense. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I read something this week that his books like Bleak
Speaker 1: House were actually based on total sales, not on word count.
Speaker 1: And you know, the reason he was guilty of so
Speaker 1: many run on sentences wasn't that he was trying to
Speaker 1: rack up the money. It was because he was using
Speaker 1: the language to satirize how pompous people of the era spoke.
Speaker 1: And that's just the first of nine stories we've got
Speaker 1: today about language and grammar. So let's dig in. Hey,
Speaker 1: their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson,
Speaker 1: and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh
Speaker 1: Ticketer and sitting behind the soundproof glass wearing a shirt
Speaker 1: that has five commas and a lizard on it, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what Oh, I get it? Okay,
Speaker 1: common comma, common common comma, you get it? Yeah? Actually,
Speaker 1: christ And told me about the shirt. You got it
Speaker 1: when you found out that you were really into boy Joy. Uh.
Speaker 1: Such a nice guy, and I think he's probably on
Speaker 1: the triple digits in the number of T shirts he's
Speaker 1: worn in honor of our episodes. Now, but that's our
Speaker 1: friend and producer Tristan McNeil. So I actually want to
Speaker 1: kick this off by saying I like grammar jokes, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, eat shoots and leaves the comma citra stop
Speaker 1: grammar time Like, I love these jokes, and we've printed
Speaker 1: tons of them over the years, But I actually think
Speaker 1: my cousin Shannup, who is brilliant, might have written one
Speaker 1: of the cleverest grammar jokes of all time. You want
Speaker 1: to hear it. Of course, I'll never turn down a
Speaker 1: good grammar joke. Manga. So there's a guy who has
Speaker 1: a stomach pain, right, and he goes to the doctor
Speaker 1: and he's howling and he's complaining, and the doctor checks
Speaker 1: him out and he tells them, look, this isn't good.
Speaker 1: You've got a severe problem here, and there are only
Speaker 1: two ways to treat it. I could take out half
Speaker 1: your colon or I could give you medicine, but you're
Speaker 1: going to be chronically constipated. What do you want to do?
Speaker 1: And so the guy thinks about it and thinks about it,
Speaker 1: and he says, just go ahead and take out half
Speaker 1: my colon. And the doctor goes, why do you choose
Speaker 1: an option? And he says, because I prefer a semicolon
Speaker 1: to a full stop. I think I saw where that
Speaker 1: would go, and that's pretty good. Yeah, it's a cute joke, right,
Speaker 1: and you don't get cute jokes about grammar and constipation
Speaker 1: at the same time. It's true it's hard to come
Speaker 1: by one of those. All right, well, let's move on
Speaker 1: to some facts. That was a good joke. But why
Speaker 1: don't I start us off with the bank Sea of Punctuation.
Speaker 1: And this is a grammar vigilante in England who goes
Speaker 1: around fixing apostrophes. And I know that sounds weird, but
Speaker 1: he does this like in the cloak of darkness, like
Speaker 1: a true superhero, fighting bad grammar with the help of
Speaker 1: his trusty apostrophiser. As he says, So what is an apostrophiser? Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds fancy, but it's actually just a broom handle
Speaker 1: with two sponges where you can play stickers to cover
Speaker 1: up apostrophes or like put them in phrases occasionally. And
Speaker 1: he's been doing this for about a decade. And he
Speaker 1: also uses a scalpel and tries to be very neat
Speaker 1: about it. But apparently people have very mixed feelings about
Speaker 1: his work. Some of course, applaud the correction of grammar
Speaker 1: around town, and others, you know, mostly shopkeepers. They're kind
Speaker 1: of upset because you know, they've got to either replace
Speaker 1: the signs or live with the occasional bad sticker job.
Speaker 1: And what about when people say it's vandalism or or
Speaker 1: like it's a crime to do this. Well, he has
Speaker 1: a response to that. He's actually gone on record saying
Speaker 1: the grammar mistakes are the much bigger crimes here. That
Speaker 1: is a bold stance. But but what's interesting to me
Speaker 1: is that your grammar Banksy isn't the only grammar vigilante
Speaker 1: out there. I read this great story of these guys
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight, who'd I think graduated from Dartmouth,
Speaker 1: and then they set out on this great American grammar hunt.
Speaker 1: And they called themselves TEAL, which I guess stood form
Speaker 1: the typo Eradication Advancement League, and they kind of had
Speaker 1: a similar mission. So the newspapers described their road trip
Speaker 1: across America as part Kerouac, part grammar Nazi, just fixing
Speaker 1: signs and store windows wherever they went. And it went
Speaker 1: mind for a while, like they went through a number
Speaker 1: of states. But when they got to the Grand Canyon,
Speaker 1: they fixed up this sign that had errors, but it
Speaker 1: turned out to be this historic preservation sign and they
Speaker 1: got caught and arrested. So what happened to them after that?
Speaker 1: They actually got banned from national parks for a year
Speaker 1: and they had to pay about three thousand dollars of fines,
Speaker 1: which you know they happily did. But what's funny is
Speaker 1: that one of the guy's diary entries was used in
Speaker 1: the court case, and this is what it says, quote,
Speaker 1: I discovered a hand rendered sign inside that I regret
Speaker 1: to report had a few errors. I know today was
Speaker 1: supposed to be my day off from typo hunting, but
Speaker 1: if I may be permitted to quote that most revered
Speaker 1: of android law enforcers, Inspector Gadget, always on duty, I
Speaker 1: can't shut it off. Will we never be free from
Speaker 1: the shackles of apostrophic misunderstanding, even in a place surrounded
Speaker 1: by natural beauty like you? He was super entitled, but
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that sounds pretty entitled. The weirdest
Speaker 1: thing is that while they widened out a lot of errors,
Speaker 1: they left one. It was the misspelling of the word immense,
Speaker 1: which I guess started with an E on the sign.
Speaker 1: They left that because they would have defaced the sign
Speaker 1: too much. But one of the guys basically said that
Speaker 1: he still has nightmares over not fixing that error. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious. So do you know why they were so
Speaker 1: passionate about fixing these grammatical errors? Like was it just
Speaker 1: for fun or some other mission here? I mean, apparently
Speaker 1: they got really into grammar after winning these spelling bees
Speaker 1: in middle school, so they just took it on after that.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good, all right, Well here's a pretty funny one.
Speaker 1: So did you realize that Julius Caesar wrote two books
Speaker 1: about Latin grammar? So I actually did know this. I
Speaker 1: remember the fact from our magazine days, along with the
Speaker 1: story that um, one time Caesar got caught by pirates
Speaker 1: and they offered this ransom for him, and he thought
Speaker 1: the ransom was too low, so he increased it. He
Speaker 1: made them increase it because he felt undervalued. But you
Speaker 1: were saying he was a grammar fund as well, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the weird parts, like he wrote these
Speaker 1: books while in battle, and our researcher E's found this
Speaker 1: fact that that I love. So whenever Marcus Ralius used
Speaker 1: to complain that he didn't have time to read, his
Speaker 1: tutor used to annoyingly bring up that Julius Caesar managed
Speaker 1: to write a whole book on language, and he was
Speaker 1: conquering Gaul at the same time as writing this book.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's when like your mom keeps comparing
Speaker 1: you to like the goody two shoots down the street,
Speaker 1: who's so perfect. You know. It's like Caesar could write
Speaker 1: a book while he was in battle. You can. So
Speaker 1: here's a quick one I hadn't heard. Apparently, in nineteen four,
Speaker 1: Winston Cigarettes debuted this new filter tip cigarette and it
Speaker 1: had the slogan Winston tastes real good like a cigarette should, right,
Speaker 1: And it wasn't controversial because of this filter tip or
Speaker 1: or how tasty cigarettes are? You know, it was pushing
Speaker 1: this idea that cigarettes can be so tasty. People actually
Speaker 1: disliked the slogan because it was ungrammatical and grammar slaves
Speaker 1: didn't appreciate use of the word like when they should
Speaker 1: have been using as I guess and I got this
Speaker 1: from adage. But one famous author at the time, this
Speaker 1: guy John Mason Brown, did a twenty minute rent on
Speaker 1: air and said it caused him physical pain to hear
Speaker 1: the slogan. But then he ended his bit by pulling
Speaker 1: out a Winston from his pocket, lighting up and saying,
Speaker 1: but I think the cigarette is great, right right, which
Speaker 1: feels a little hypocritical. Anyway, the grammar debate got to
Speaker 1: such a ground swell that Winston actually added a tagline
Speaker 1: to their tagline, which was what do you want good
Speaker 1: grammar or good taste? And I'm curious? What did people
Speaker 1: want good taste? I guess. I mean this discussion propelled
Speaker 1: Winston like into the top cigarette spot, I guess, and
Speaker 1: after just nine months, the brand sold six point five
Speaker 1: billion of the new cigarettes because they were just so tasty.
Speaker 1: I guess. It's such a weird way describe something like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is weird that people could get so
Speaker 1: up in arms about this kind of thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love how passionate they are. Yeah, but I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand that type of grammar issue, right, Like
Speaker 1: it sounds good to the ear, sounds pleasing enough people
Speaker 1: understand you. You know, I understand grammar for the most part.
Speaker 1: But um, I also like breaking the laws of grammar
Speaker 1: take great pleasure in that. So, so, where where do
Speaker 1: you want to go from here? I feel like we
Speaker 1: should go from tasty cigarettes to the animal Kingdom and
Speaker 1: specifically the Bengal finch. Now, the Bengal finch needs strict
Speaker 1: syntax to communicate. And I know that may sound weird,
Speaker 1: you know, like you think about their chirping sentences, they
Speaker 1: actually have to be arranged in a certain way in
Speaker 1: order to make sense. And we know this thanks to
Speaker 1: this researcher at Kyoto University who took bird calls then
Speaker 1: jumbled them up and saw how they reacted to these.
Speaker 1: So you'd play the four or five songs and and
Speaker 1: watch when one of the songs was altered and the
Speaker 1: birds would behave normally for the properly arranged songs and
Speaker 1: then overreact or act like something was really wrong. When
Speaker 1: they got the remixed version of these, and it was
Speaker 1: it was really like it agitated them and they knew
Speaker 1: something from these was really off. That's really funny. They
Speaker 1: think like they'd get so flustered by bad grammar or
Speaker 1: just totally used by it. But you know, I found this,
Speaker 1: uh crazy thing. It's from this BBC story on this
Speaker 1: book The Elements of Eloquence, and it actually says that
Speaker 1: English speakers have this unwritten rule that we use for
Speaker 1: adjectives and basically to understand each other. We have a
Speaker 1: specific order in which we communicate our adjectives. And I
Speaker 1: had never thought about this, but like when you string
Speaker 1: them together, it goes opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose,
Speaker 1: and then the noun, right, And that's so weird because
Speaker 1: like you don't think about classifying things like that, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a please excuse my dear aunt
Speaker 1: Sally for words, and in practice it actually makes sense,
Speaker 1: Like you'd unconsciously say something like big black dog, right
Speaker 1: like size before, color before now instead of black big dog,
Speaker 1: which just kind of makes me sound like an idiot, right,
Speaker 1: You sounds so dumb when you said that. You know
Speaker 1: that black big dog. And the folks example is even longer,
Speaker 1: so like that they're showing you how like if you
Speaker 1: say something like, uh, the lovely little old rectangular French
Speaker 1: whittling knife and that phrase, if we're saying that to
Speaker 1: one another, you do get a sense of what I'm
Speaker 1: saying because you sort of understand the order in which
Speaker 1: I'm going to describe something. That is amazing, because I
Speaker 1: don't ever remember learning anything like that in school, at
Speaker 1: least in to that degree of specificity. It is all
Speaker 1: just what makes sense to our ear. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. So, all right, we've got two more facts
Speaker 1: to go, but before we get to those, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where
Speaker 1: we're talking grammar and language. So will what's your last
Speaker 1: back going? Maybe? All right, what I think I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about the sark mark, which is a new
Speaker 1: punctuation market. It was created to show sarcasm. And the
Speaker 1: reason I like the market it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: the AT sign with a point in the middle, is
Speaker 1: because you know, people don't often understand jokes and text,
Speaker 1: and this is a way to communicate that. And you know,
Speaker 1: I guess now that we have emojis and winks to
Speaker 1: show that we're kidding. But the creators, these guys, Paul
Speaker 1: and Douglas Sack of Shelby Township, Michigan, they wrote on
Speaker 1: their website quote, in today's world, with increasing commentary, debate
Speaker 1: and rhetoric, what better time could there be than now
Speaker 1: to ensure that no sarcastic message, comment or opinion is
Speaker 1: left behind. It feels like they could have used a
Speaker 1: stark mark at the end of that sentence. I think
Speaker 1: probably so, yeah, But I mean, you think about it.
Speaker 1: It could be useful, especially end like your boss is
Speaker 1: joking with you, or someone empowered like a politician. You know,
Speaker 1: it would be super helpful in those instances. Oh, definitely.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because the Sacks copyrighted and trademark their sign.
Speaker 1: But it isn't the only one out there. There are
Speaker 1: lots of other fun punctuation marks, like the snark mark,
Speaker 1: which isn't copyrighted, the rhetorical question mark it kind of
Speaker 1: indicates questions you don't have to answer. You've got the
Speaker 1: authority mark, and even the love point, which very sweetly
Speaker 1: has two question marks on one point facing each other
Speaker 1: to make a heart that is kind of cute. Well,
Speaker 1: one punctuation point you didn't mention, and I'm lucky you
Speaker 1: didn't because I actually wanted to end on. This is
Speaker 1: the in Taro bang and it's the exclamation point over
Speaker 1: a question mark. And it was created by this copywriter,
Speaker 1: a guy named Martin Specter, who thought, you know, it
Speaker 1: didn't look very sleek in print or very professional in
Speaker 1: print when you use multiple punctuation marks at the end
Speaker 1: of a sentence, and basically you wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to use it and add copy like he wrote this phrase, um,
Speaker 1: what a refrigerator that makes its own cubes, and that
Speaker 1: was his actual example, and he wanted people to be
Speaker 1: able to use these interro banks, both after what and cubes,
Speaker 1: So he ran a contest to name his new punctuation mark,
Speaker 1: and other suggestions included exclaim a quest, the exclarative, and
Speaker 1: the quiz ding, which I actually kind of but I
Speaker 1: guess bang is a printer's slang for an exclamation point,
Speaker 1: and it also kind of has a nice ring to it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: what's amazing to me is both how well the interor
Speaker 1: bank succeeded and didn't because, you know, while no one
Speaker 1: uses it today, it was an actual key on a
Speaker 1: lot of typewriters in the sixties and seventies, and there
Speaker 1: was even this upside down version of it created called
Speaker 1: no barettni and uh, I guess that's just intero banging
Speaker 1: backwards and it was made to be used in Spanish sentences. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. You know, I was familiar with the
Speaker 1: Intero bank, but I actually didn't really lies that it
Speaker 1: was on keyboards that long ago. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all these beautiful Smith Corona typewriters actually, well, I kind
Speaker 1: of want to give you the trophy today, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. It takes guts for Tristan to be walking
Speaker 1: around with that terrible karma chameleon. So I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, he did this for me, knowing I was
Speaker 1: a boy George fan. He might be mocking me. You
Speaker 1: never know what Tristan. He never really lets onto whether
Speaker 1: he is or not, So I kind of feel like
Speaker 1: I want to give the trophy to him. Are you
Speaker 1: okay with that? That sounds fine to me. Awesome and
Speaker 1: thanks to Eves jeff Cote for her brilliant research as always,
Speaker 1: and thank you guys for listening. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: a full length episode tomorrow