This article was written for Annabel & Grace, which is now part of Rest Less.
I copied the hubby into my ‘thank you letter’ email I had just sent to my friend Sue. He rang me immediately to say, “Please do not tell me you have already sent that thank you letter?” I stayed silent because I was doing what I was told.
“Oh no!! You can’t have! It’s atrocious English with appalling grammar. There weren’t any paragraphs and it just bumbles on and on for eternity. No one will understand a word you said!”
“I don’t care because I understand it!” I shot back, irritated that I’d copied him in. That’s what I get for ‘sharing’.
“I know you really well and even I haven’t a clue what you’re rabbiting on about! You have written pages of words and it’s all shoved into one sentence.”
“I think it flows.” I hoped that would silence him. “Nobody needs full stops when it’s flowing.”
“I think it flowed right over my head. As it will over the heads of anyone who reads it, too!” The hubby sounded like he was, at long last, winding up this infuriating conversation. ‘Telling offs’ should be short and sweet, not bore someone to death.
I made a little parting shot. “I think they will appreciate the speed of my chatting. You would have just punctuated it out of the flow zone!” I like to leave with the final word or paragraph in this situation. “Your letters are so grammatically regimented and ‘fun policed’ that nobody really wants to receive them.” A bit below the belt but he deserved it for wasting my precious, undisciplined time.
I am not terribly interested in paragraphs, full stops or any other little squiggle that I haven’t fully understood. I do enjoy exclamation marks however. Thoroughly approve of them actually! I try to add at least one or two of these, when the sentence looks a bit naked.
The timing of this exchange was annoying because I wanted to bestow on him some surprisingly jolly news. I was the bearer of good tidings. The hubby’s thank you letter to my step-mother was deemed so brilliantly funny that she was going to frame it, directly contradicting what I’d said about ‘the dullness’. Now, of course, he will have to wait until he deserves to receive this accolade. Today’s not looking good and tomorrow doesn’t look much better! Stick that in your paragraph and smoke it!
More joyously funny posts from Miranda can be read here