The Vitriol of the Left-handed Man

The world has, in the past, been a bad place for left-handed people. There are endless accounts of lefties being associated with evil of every kind, and left-handed people have been mistrusted and treated like social lepers in the past. Some of the anecdotes are quite personal to me, too: my own grandmother had her left hand tied behind her back in an effort to make her write with her right. It didn't work, and eventually the bastards relented.

At this point I should mention that I, too, am left-handed. I've never been adversely affected by 'leftism'. I don't have difficulty with daily tasks, and a lot of things I do in the way a right-handed person would, simply because it's easier that way. I'm lucky in a way, because although I have difficulty writing with my right hand, most other tasks are possible, or even preferable. I'm a pretty good pool player left handed, but not far behind right handed, so in some ways I even have an advantage. I play football, hockey and tennis in a right-handed manner, and operate my computer with the mouse to my right.

None of these things bother me particularly, and I'm not about to get up in arms about discrimination or anything. But being a father has highlighted one of the areas in which leftism has a personal impact - the area of language.

Regular readers might have an appreciation of the fact that, to me, language is a rather important thing. I really rather enjoy writing, and get a great deal of pleasure from exploring the origins of language, of understanding why a particular word or phrase has come to have a certain meaning.

At the moment, we are trying - in a small, irregular and rather messy way - to teach our two-year-old daughter the difference between right and left, principally to ensure that the right shoe goes on the right foot. And there is the problem. The 'right' shoe on the 'right' foot. What we mean, of course, is the correct shoe on the correct foot, unless of course we really are talking about the right-hand shoe on the right-hand foot.

Do you know why the word 'right' has become synonymous with 'correct'? It's because its opposite, 'left', was considered 'incorrect'. The right side was the correct side, and so the word 'right' replaced the word 'correct' in most of the places it is used in our language. Probably because it has half the syllables.

This use of 'right' even extended to the naming of animals - the Southern Right Whale is so named because it was considered the 'right' whale to catch - good blubber or something, I presume. It should be called the Southern Correct Whale, though with my environmentalist hat on I should point out that there is no such thing as correctness in whale hunting, except for by those who rely on it for food (Inuit peoples often do).

I'm not after a revolution here, but sometimes I'd like people to think about the origins of the words they use.  Trying to teach a two-year-old that there are two senses for a word is a complex business, especially when it's one of the more fundamental concepts they will have to grasp. And in case you're wondering, there's no sign yet of handedness in her.

A Little Thing about Punctuation

I'm not a "grammar Nazi" (horrible term), but I do strongly believe in the importance of proper punctuation in written communication*.

Punctuation exists for one reason, and one reason alone: so that the readers of a document are able to determine how its author would like them to read it. It sets the rules for how a sentence should be construed. As such, there really aren't any rules about how punctuation should be applied. People will tell you there are, but there aren't. Take, for example, the work of Agatha Christie - she abuses hyphens like they've done her some personal injury, but you get her point.

The only rules lie around the common interpretation of the symbols we use. For instance, we all know that a full stop (or 'period'. Ew...) signifies in our minds that we should pause and take a mental breath. Or a physical one, if reading out loud. Similarly, a comma indicates a lesser pause, and a semicolon somewhere in between; though we should only use the semi when we're going to continue along the same lines with the second half of the sentence (or when separating items in a list which follows a colon).

As long as there's agreement and understanding on what these little dots and squiggles mean, you really should use punctuation how you see fit. And word order? Well, that matters hardly at all; hardly matters at all, in fact.

But God help you if you can't tell the difference between there, their and they're. That's just stupid.

*There's a subtle difference between grammar and punctuation, but that's not really the point here.