Attack of the bunnies no.1: Some call it “sleep”. I call it urgent finger-recharging time
We went for a drive to a little town down the coast, and, in case it was ever somewhere we wanted to get away for a weekend, I picked up a few leaflets for local places to stay.
On the back of one, there were comments from satisfied guests.
Fabulous place and fabulous stay — all the comforts of a perfect getaway
said one. Which was pretty straightforward and unremarkable.
Our only regret is having just one night here!
said another, which was also quite direct and what one might expect from a guest book. But the next one was something quite beyond. It wasn’t the words themselves that made it so special - no, the words were just fine: it was the things that came inbetween them that were the problem. It was like someone had taken a normal guestbook comment, and then decided to take it to the punctuation fairy, who proceeded to sneeze all over it.
The “Barn” is my all time “favorite” Place!!! -So “cozy”, “quaint” “charming” “quiet”, “rustic” & “comfortable!” Your “beautiful”, “antique” bed is so “comfortable” & “pillowy” & I’ve never ever “slept” so “well” as I do here!
It’s just brilliant. What, exactly, are they trying to convey with the quote marks, here? Is it NOT really an antique? Not really beautiful? And all of that is all well and good, but it’s the “slept” and “well” that kill me. Are they trying to communicate that they didn’t sleep? Or that they did sleep, but that the concept of sleeping well is a subjective concept that really shouldn’t really be fixed in something so permanent and official a document as a guest book comment?
Whatever the case, I just want to find this person and talk to them, because I can’t escape the feeling that it might not be restricted to their writing alone. I deeply suspect that when they talk, they do the same thing. That every time they come across a word in a sentence that they have decided might be somehow problematic or extra special or worth emphasising or not quite the word they were aiming for - or, you know, just a noun - they would raise their hands either side of their head and raise their index and middle fingers and do the bunny ear thing, drawing quote marks in the air.
I wonder whether those two fingers on each hand are more toned or slender than the others. It would certainly seem to make sense. A full conversation would be like an army of bunnies with matching sets of twitching bunny ears, marching in pairs over the horizon threatening to bunny-ear you to death. It would be brilliant - I only hope one day to meet them.
This reminds me of that very funny episode in Friends, when Joey kept getting it wrong. It was very cute somehow. :) If you have not seen it, it is worth watching. :)
Comment by scary azeri — 19 November, 2009 4:34 am
I rather think this person speaks in sort of jerky, blurty, shouty sentences so the “quote” “marks” are spoken: The BARN! Is my all time FAVORITE!! place!!! Also I believe she (oh come now, it is a she, it must be a she - we all know it’s a she, right?) is one of those people who stand just a little too close and talk just a little too quickly and don’t look you in the eye but case the room looking for someone more interesting or attractive.
Hmmm… apparently punctuation abuse makes me judgy!
Comment by Megan — 19 November, 2009 7:30 am
There’s a blog for things such as this. Unnecessary Quotation Marks. Full of snark and sarcasm. You’d fit right in (and I say that with much love). And this is just the perfect subject for that blog. You should take a picture and submit it.
Comment by Becky Mochaface — 19 November, 2009 10:32 am
I’m reminded of the Friends episode too.. Joey keeps using air quotes wrong.. crack up especially when he says he’s sorry. Here’s a bit from youtube for you.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tIacBHehEc
Comment by Miss Devylish — 19 November, 2009 12:23 pm
Megan: Totally. :)
Comment by scary azeri — 19 November, 2009 1:48 pm
I just had one of those amazing-but-ultimately-useless revelatory moments.
There are lots of words whose meaning I don’t quite get right, and this is because, rather than ever having had them explained to me or looked them up in a dictionary, I’ve seen them used in context and just guessed at what they might mean. And been close enough that I’ve got away with it.
Of course, this is how we all learn language. Children/babies hear it used in context and gradually deduce what it all means and how it works.
And this thing of misplaced quotation marks is actually quite a common phenomenon… so what’s going on?
And then I thought, could it be a newspaper headline thing?
ELIZABETH “TIRED”, SAYS FRUSTRATED PRINCE.
They see things such as that and decide that the point of the quotation marks is to emphasise a word. Kind of like highlighting it in bold. It would probably work as an alternative explanation, and if nobody ever told them otherwise they could hold onto that misconception indefinitely.
It reminds me of an opposite mistake I made for a while… in the early days of email and the internet, a lot of geeks I knew used to enclose words in asterisks as an alternative to using bold (because few email apps could do anything as sophisticated as bold, and many text editors were the same). “Oh my God,” they would type, “look at this truly *amazing* thing.” For ages it confused me, because the only punctuation marks I was used to that worked like that - as something to enclose the word - were quotation marks, and I thought that’s what the asterisks were supposed to represent.
But anyway. This example is still very funny, and I too want to meet this person!
Comment by Beleaguered Squirrel — 19 November, 2009 2:18 pm
The first “satisfied” guest was clearly W.H. Auden or “someone”
Comment by Sally — 19 November, 2009 3:11 pm
“and then decided to take it to the punctuation fairy, who proceeded to sneeze all over it.”
There is a great mental image
Comment by Invader_Stu — 20 November, 2009 6:37 am
Perhaps the lady who had never “slept” so “well” was on her honeymoon?
Comment by Rob — 23 November, 2009 5:24 am
The punctuation fairy is now working for the BBC. See this, from a report this morning on the first collisions carried out in the Large Hadron Collider:
Housed in a tunnel 100m beneath the Franco-Swiss border, the LHC uses some 1,200 “superconducting” magnets to bend proton beams in opposite directions around the tunnel at close to the speed of light.
At allotted points around the “ring”, the proton beams cross, smashing into one another with enormous energy.
Large “detector” machines located at these crossing points will scour the wreckage of the collisions for discoveries that could roll back the frontiers of knowledge.
Comment by Rob — 24 November, 2009 6:23 am
Many years ago, spotted in the Visitors’ comment book in Chatsworth Farm Shop: “Unfortunately Janet Smith made her presence felt”. Since then, in every Visitors’ Comment Book we have ever had the pleasure to write in, we’ve added that comment to our own. Comment books are a thing of joy, always
Comment by NickyB — 2 December, 2009 3:23 am