Something Rhymes with Purple - Plings & Bangs!

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

Join Susie and Gyles as they venture back to pre-biblical times to uncover the history of punctuation marks. This week we’ll be diving into the drama of the comma whilst teasing out the moments when the semi-colon provides the perfect pause. We also unearth a confession from both Gyles and Susie about their - as of yet, unsuccessful - attempts to read James Joyce's Ulysses (hint: there's a sentence that contains 4391 words). We also get through lots of your brilliant emails and we want you to get in touch with any questions you may have, or any differing views on punctuation… [e-mail]. A Somethin’ Else production. Susie’s trio: Insordescent - growing in filthiness Misdelight - pleasure in something wrong Leese - to be a loser. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

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with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main We'll see you next time. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Something else. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple, the podcast about words, language and all sorts of random musings from me, Susie Dent, and my co-host.

Charles Brandreth. Hello. I'm speaking to you from London, England, and Susie Dent is in Oxford, Oxfordshire. I am. And if you hear a little tinkle in the background, that'll be my cat, who now is wearing a bell on her collar, just a little tiny bell, not one that's going to be deafening to her, because she's become a serial killer. And I don't like this. So for the first time in her life, she's discovered the joy of the hunt. And anyway, so I apologise if you hear little bells behind me, that's what it is. And who has she been hunting? A little chick, which was very distressing. She

brought in, but it had just about fledged um she bought that into the kitchen which is really horrible and then a mouse which looked dead as undead giles dead as a doornail and um then as i went very hesitantly to pick it up and give it a decent burial it scurried off so um anyway yeah this is a bit of a. I said it was random musings from you. It isn't so much random musings because I want to begin with an old riddle. Okay. What's the difference between a cat and a comma? Ah. Do you remember this one?

No. Is it because it looks like a tail, but one is going down and the other's going up? No. What's the difference between a cat and a comma? One has its claws at the end of its paws a comma one has its claws at the end of its paws and one is a paws at the end of a clause very good i like that i like that yeah and i i've had that ready not that i knew you were going to mention your cat and its tinkle because i thought we should talk a bit about punctuation this week yes because i'm quite hot on punctuation. I may be more obsessed with it

than you are. Well, no, I love a semicolon, as you'll discover. Ah, good. I think punctuation is important. It's obviously important because it helps people understand what you're saying. There are lots of funny examples of headlines or sentences where the punctuation isn't in the right place or it isn't there and people get confused. I did a little book about punctuation called Have You Eaten Grandma? Without the comma, have you eaten grandma? Suggests you might actually have, you know, eaten grandma rather as your cat was attempting to eat the chick. Whereas have you eaten comma grandma means, nan, have you had your tea yet? So I believe in punctuation. I don't know how old the word comma is. I know what it does.

Well, shall I give you a potted history of punctuation? I'd love to. Because it is quite interesting. Yes. Because if you go right back to the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans, they didn't really see a need for punctuation for quite a while because everything was pretty much orated. It was spoken and anything that was written down was frustratingly time consuming to read because the readers had to pick their way through this kind of mass of letters where each word or sentence ended and the next began. There was

no structure to it at all, but it wasn't seen as being particularly important because of this kind of oral tradition. But there was a librarian who was in Alexandria and he decided enough was enough. He had to do loads. He was chief of staff at the city's library and he had to do loads of reading. So he decided that actually readers and writers

should annotate their documents and kind of break up this stream of text with dots. And he had a system of a bottom dot, a middle dot and a top dot, which corresponded to pauses that you should make of different lengths and that you'd insert between units of speech called the comma, the colon and the periodos as they were then. of speech called the comma, the colon, and the periodos, as they were then. So it's not quite the same. It's not punctuation as we know it today. But he was the first to say, look, enough is enough. We have got to start breaking up this text. But that was sort of jettisoned for a while. And it actually took the popularity of Christianity in the Bible to kind of bring that thought back to the fore where people thought we really need to be able to understand the Bible. And Christians like to write down their Psalms and their Gospels to spread the Word of God, and punctuation came back in. But it's absolutely fascinating. So it's got its roots in ancient texts, but it didn't really become seen as

necessary until much, much later. Well, let's begin then with the comma and the semicolon. We all know, I think, what a full stop does, also called a period in America. Yes, from that Greek period. Why do we have a different word from them? We also used to call it period, I'm pretty sure, for a full stop, because to period something as a verb meant to bring to an end or to terminate something. And that goes right back to the 16th century. So it's absolutely logical that that would be used for a full stop. Quite why we went different ways. I guess it's like American and

British English all the way down the line. We just wanted to be different. But as you say, they meant pretty much the same thing. I like a sentence that is short, concise and has a full stop because it adds to the drama. Reader, comma, I married him. Full stop. Yeah. Whereas, have you ever tried to read James Joyce's famous novel, Ulysses? I'm afraid I've taken it on holiday about five times and it stayed in my suitcase. Written in 1922.

It's going to take me until 2022 to get beyond. well, actually almost to get beyond the first sentence. Actually, it features a sentence, I think I'm right in remembering this, of 4,391 words before you get to a full stop. What? 4,000 words in one sentence. Yeah. Oh, good grief. Oh, good grief. But I met a novelist, a modern novelist called Jonathan Coe once. And I think he wrote a novel about 20 years ago called The Rotter's Club. And he conjured up a single sentence that ran to nearly 14,000 words.

14,000 words before you got to the full stop. Too much. Those are semicolons there. Just too much. So that's, in a sense, the way I think when you're writing, a simple way of remembering where you should use a full stop, a comma, or a semicolon is simply to think how you would speak it. A full stop comes at the end of a sentence. It's a moment's pause. A semicolon is a little bit shorter than that. It's at the end of an idea before introducing another idea. The comma is just a slight pause. And it's useful, isn't it, the comma?

It is useful, but it's funny because if you look back etymologically to its origin, it's from the Greek meaning to stamp or cut off. So it kind of implies there's a lot more definitive than something that just introduces a pause. But they're quite physical, some of the names for punctuation, because a colon is a limb. The idea of a sentence or a clause is like the limb of a body. It's only part of the whole, which I think is quite interesting. In a moment, we're going to define the difference between the colon and the semicolon. But first, let's finish with the comma, which is obviously used as a pause to separate different clauses. It's also used in lists. And in lists, there's something called the Oxford comma, which is it favoured in America? I

know it's favoured by the Oxford University Press. And I assume that includes the Oxford English Dictionary. What is the Oxford comma and why do you advocate it if you do? I do. I use it all the time. And I know that that is spurned by a lot of teachers. I'm not sure if it's officially spurned by the curriculum, but I know certainly kids do get marked wrongly. Their work gets marked as incorrect if they insert an Oxford comma. So essentially, work gets marked as incorrect if they insert an Oxford comma. So essentially, it is a comma that immediately precedes the conjunction, usually and or but, in a list of items. And Oxford University Press like it because it avoids ambiguity. It's very interesting. Do you remember earlier this year, it seems so long ago now, but back in January, Philip Pullman,

I think we might have talked about this on our pod, because Philip Pullman said that the Brexit 50p coin in Britain is missing an Oxford comma and should be boycotted by all literate people. So he felt very, very strongly with possibly a slight tongue in cheek. But it is to avoid ambiguity. to avoid ambiguity. So if you say the curtains were red, comma, white, comma, and blue and green, and you don't have any other commas, that will show you that there was red curtains, blue curtains, or I forgot my colours mixed up, and white and green, or whatever I said at the end, a combination of colours. And, you know, I think we gave the example that my parents, And, you know, I think we gave the example that my parents, what was it? My parents dedicate this book to my parents, comma, God and Mavis. And you are implying, if you don't put the other comma before Mavis, that your parents are God and Mavis. A couple of nice examples.

My favourite flavours of drink are orange, lemon, raspberry, and lime, and ginger. If you don't have a comma after and lime, it's because your favorite drinks include lime and ginger as a flavor. But if you do have a comma after lime, you can make it clear that they used to be strawberry, apple, pear, lime, and ginger. There's a very funny example from a Times newspaper cutting. It once ran a description without using the Oxford comma, and it was describing a television program documentary featuring Peter Ustinov, and it promised highlights of his global tour will include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod, and a dildo collector. encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector. So that implies, without the Oxford comma, that that's what Nelson Mandela was. So that's why the Oxford comma is important. Commas, we know quite simply what they are, I think. Tell me now about the colon. What do you think the colon does? Well, the colon you use if... I'm actually really bad at...

Because I never learned formal grammar in English. I'm really bad at articulating this. So I'm going to leave it to you. But I use colons a lot when what follows the colon is an explanation or the result of what went before the colon. But that's a really bad way of explaining it. Well, I think a simple way of explaining it... I mean, the colon itself, obviously, is the largest part of the large intestine,

extending from the, is it the cacum to the rectum? Is that how you pronounce it? Yes. I think it is. Anyway, the punctuation mark, the colon, if you picture it, it's one dot above another dot. And I would say, picture those two dots, one above the other, like a pair of binoculars on their side. Okay? So if you think of them, the binoculars will remind you of the colon's core purpose. It's there to help you look ahead. It's to help you to see what's coming. The colon doesn't separate or stop like the comma or the semicolon or the full stop.

It introduces what lies ahead. It takes you forward. So you use a colon to introduce a list, to introduce direct speech, to introduce an explanation, you know, and it's quite straightforward in a way. So the colon, I think, is relatively simple. So what about the semicolon then?

But the semicolon, now that's more interesting. Now you are a bit of a semicolon groupie, aren't you? I am because I like to mix up the length of my sentences. So if what is coming up is related to what went before and should not be broken up by a sentence, then I'll add in the breadth of a semicolon. Yeah. Yeah. And may I give you an example? This won't take long long but it's important believe me you see it's two thoughts in a way this won't take long but it's important that's really interesting i wouldn't put a semicolon in that sentence i put a comma in there except then you'll be saying this won't take long but it's's important, believe me. What I'm wanting to do is emphasise, this won't take long, but it's important, comma, believe me.

So I'm saying this won't take long, semicolon, but it's important, comma, believe me. So I use the semicolon as I speak, okay? It's providing a pause that is longer and more significant than a comma and less abrupt and intrusive than yeah it keeps the flow i think yeah yeah um now i like that at some point i would love to tell you the history of various punctuation marks because they're they're quite interesting i think you know americans i mean i've got this from a you know someone called ben mcintyre he was the london times correspondent

in new york and washington dc and uh he wrote a marvelous column about this. And he said Americans have long regarded the semicolon with suspicion. They thought it was genteel, self-conscious, neither one thing nor the other, a sort of punctuation mark with neither the butchness of a full colon nor the flighty promiscuity of the comma. And indeed people, writers like Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chardler, Stephen King, wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch using a semicolon. No, and actually, do you know what? So much of our punctuation is changing, which is quite fascinating. So I think the number of kids these days that would use a semicolon is dwindling fast because what they would use, like adverbs, you know um as we've spoken of in the past you're no longer well

you're good and you drive safe uh etc like the adverb punctuation marks are changing they're not going all together but instead of a semicolon i think um instead of a colon people will put a dash now and i think instead of a semicolon people will probably just put in a full stop um yeah it's definitely changing quite dramatically it's a subtle instrument but i like it also it's useful to when you're connecting two phrases two sentences where they complement one another the cat has never been healthier the vet spills can be justified yes Yes, that one, I agree. I like that one. One leads into the other. She hates the vet, but the visits undoubtedly do her good. I wouldn't put a semicolon

before the butt here. You'd put a comma, would you? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, we can all have... We all have our own styles. We all have our own styles.

So other punctuation marks. I mean, the dash, you mentioned the dash. There are two types of dash, and I know it's slightly different have we all have our own styles that's you know we all have our own styles yeah so uh others other punctuation marks i mean the dash you mentioned the dash there are two types of dash and i know it's slightly different in america from here there's the n dash and the m dash you know the difference between the two gosh uh when i was proofreading there was one's bigger than the other yeah the n dash and n is a measurement of length yes i remember the word n because it's useful in scrabble yes and an n basically it's the width of an n in a typesetting letter n, and an m is the width of an m in a typesetting letter m. What are their different uses then? The different uses are, well, the n dash, it's longer than a hyphen, the m dash is twice the

length of an n dash. We can rattle through the N-dash pretty swiftly. Essentially, the N-dash is used to represent a span or a range of numbers, dates, or time. Oscar Wilde, 1854, N-dash, 1900. Okay. You get what I'm saying? Got it. The 20, 21 season, between 20 and 21, it's the short dash. I got you. The longer dash, it's a pause for effect or it's filling in a gap,

that sort of thing. And that's it. It's that one that the kids are using these days. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And also, I think it's quite interesting too, the way punctuation can be subtly used. For example, some people use dashes to enclose an idea and other people use brackets. So she arrived from Paris, France for Easter. That's Francis's information. But if you said she went to Paris, Texas for Christmas, you'd want to emphasize that. So you'd put it between two dashes. Are you with me? Yes. So what I'm really trying to say is that punctuation, if you use it and love it, can be a tool to good writing. Totally.

And go back to Aristophanes and what he was trying to wade through. You'll see just how necessary it is. I don't think it's not necessarily a bad thing that, you know, that we're evolving to lose our adverbs and we're evolving to lose our standard pronunciation or some of it. Because, you know, as we've always said, that's just the way that language moves on. And who knows, maybe in the 22nd century, maybe the semicolon will make a comeback. But like you, I do like them. But then there's all the other types of punctuation as well, like the sort of at sign, which has become so popular through social media. What's that called? Is it called an at sign? The at sign, yeah. We have no other word for it. It's funny, isn't it? It used to be known

as the commercial A when it first appeared on typewriters in the sort of late 19th century, because it was used in accounting and commercial invoices. So if you look right back to when Florentine merchants used to use it, which was centuries ago, they used it to denote an amphora, which is this terracotta vessel, I guess, that had become used as a unit of measure for wine and whatever was being transported. And then it came to mean at the price of an amphora and then at the price of. at the price of an amphora and then at the price of but it was ray tomlinson when he was searching for a keyboard character in the um i can't remember it's probably late 1990s 80s that wouldn't get mistaken for anything else his eyes fell on the at on his teletype machine and he sent

himself an email so he chose that one really because it wasn't very often used apart from in accounting. And so from that really narrow sphere, he kind of propelled it into what is pretty much the linchpin of modern communication, isn't it? The at symbol. Don't at me, all of that. And people now use an ampersand instead of writing out the word and. Is that right? Isn't ampersand that funny eight looking figure like an eight? Yeah, it's like if you think of M&S, between M and S. I think there are M&S's across the world now. So hopefully people will know what we're talking about. It's a store. It's a store. You will see the ampersand. And why is it called an ampersand? So the ampersand is lovely, actually, because it goes back to late 18th century when kids were learning their alphabet and they'd hold up these paddle they were called paddle books so they were these

um basically arrangements of letters on this big tablet that would have a handle and they'd hold the handle the tablet would be covered with this kind of transparent horn of an animal it was called a horn book and they would learn their alphabet have to recite it off by heart again and again and at the end of their alphabet was the symbol we know today as the ampersand but they would read it because they would just you know they were probably really bored and they would read it by rote and it would go and by itself is and but they'd say this in latin which is per se um and per se and and per se and and per se, and, am per se, and, am per se, and, am per se, and, and that eventually became heard as ampersand. Wow.

Yeah. That's amazing. I know. It's interesting. But the symbol itself is based on the Roman shorthand symbol for the Latin et, and. The symbol for an exclamation mark, that line and the dot underneath. What's the origin of that? I love the exclamation mark that yeah line and the dot underneath what's the origin of that i love the exclamation mark lots of origins as to its um theory you know it's been called so many different

things over the times like screamers and plings and bangers and all sorts but the most plausible of all the different theories is that it comes from the latin e meaning joy i o meaning joy and that was that was represented by a capital i over a lowercase o and that's where we think it comes from um the wanderer is another great one and also the double prick so it's had so many different names for it the exclamation mark and i always whenever i talk about exclamation marks i just say don't whatever you do particularly if you're a kid but also if you're an adult do not have a pile on of exclamation marks i just say don't whatever you do particularly if you're a kid but also if you're an adult do not have a pile on of exclamation marks because you'll just look stupid or as terry pratchett said a sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head oh yes it's been

called the slammer the startler the gasper the shriek yeah it's known as the bang for a while it's been called the pling yeah um it's marvelous the admiration mark what the admiration admiration mark it was called for a while yeah oh i didn't know that yeah i think it was ben johnson who was probably england's greatest punctuator because he even inserted a colon but that's right it was a colon that he called the double brick and he put that between his first and last name do you remember well you don't remember because he wouldn't have known. Even you, Giles, who know everybody,

you wouldn't have met Ben Johnson. I haven't met Dr. Johnson. I think it was he who called it the admiration mark. But I have met members of the royal family and members of the royal family pepper their correspondence with exclamation marks. No. And it is an inherited characteristic.

One of the most fascinating books that anyone can read are the letters of Queen Victoria. She was articulate and amusing, and she wrote some tremendous letters, and several volumes of them have been published. her wedding night. We won't go into all the details, but it's full of underlinings and exclamation marks. You'll remember that she married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and clearly he was a bit of a goer and she was a bit of a goer. My dearest, dearest, dear Albert sat on a footstool by my side and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before. Exclamation. Such a husband. Exclamation.

Bliss beyond belief. Exclamation. Exclamation. It was more than I can express. Oh, exclamation. Was ever woman so blessed as I am? Exclamation. I never, never spent such an evening.

Exclamation. Exclamation. What the fuck? Question mark. Exclamation. I never, never spent such an evening. Exclamation. Exclamation. What the fuck? Way too many plays and bangs in that one. Exclamation. Exclamation. WTF. Yeah, exactly. You can overdo it, can't you? Yeah, you definitely can. And that's Queen, that genuinely, I'm quoting from Queen Victoria. People don't realise that she was often amused and really quite amused. She was a goer. But the point is, if I was encouraging young people to write, I say, don't, I mean, I overdo the punctuation

anyway. I like punctuation, but don't overdo the exclamation marks. No, actually I save them for special occasions, exclamation marks. Yeah. Which is probably quite pedantic in itself. I'm sure there's a happy medium, isn't there? There's a happy medium. I might give you an example after the break of where if you leave out the punctuation, things can go terribly awry. But before that, I want you to show me your new tote bag because Buzzies that you've got, it's arrived. It hasn't arrived yet. What's it like? Oh, it's really nice. I should have it right here on zoom to show you i've used it quite a lot what is the origin of tote bag i have no idea i have no idea it's something you tote about things is it made of tote this is the something rhymes with purple tote bag and it's made of beautiful recyclable material and it's got an amusing word on the side. What is it? Belly timber?

Yes, belly timber. It says a bag full of belly timber, which is an old-fashioned word for sustenance for your stomach. But it could be sustenance because I'm going to use mine to carry books in. It's great, actually. It's really quite capacious. I'm just going to tell you about tote. Please do.

To tote something is to carry wheels or convey something. We about a gun toting person don't we definitely do not use our tote bags for guns but it's genuinely quite cute very good it's cute and people get hold of it how do they get hold of it's merch at something can you yeah i'll tell you after the break i'll look at the address all of that after the break bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no.

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You might know me as the creator and host of the How to Fail podcast. But I want to tell you about a new podcast I've made. How to Write a Book is for anyone who wants to get their story out there. Fronted by a best-selling author, a super agent and a powerhouse publisher, this 12-week masterclass will take you right through from developing an idea to nailing the plot. If you want to get all episodes at once and completely ad-free, subscribe now. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple, where we were waxing a bit lyrically about our lovely new tote bags. It's a cool purple

tote bag that isn't actually purple in colour, but it's purple in branding and you can buy it. We promised to give you the website address. It's purple.backstreetmerch.com purple.backstreetmerch.com and it's a bag full of belly timber and what i really wanted to put in the back jars was bags of mystery because you remember that was victorian slang for sausages but that's that hopefully will be on another one good i'm going to put it in the basket at the back of my trike. Yes. I've got a tricycle now, you know. Give me a new pannier.

And my pannier. Yes. I've got a pannier for the front and a metal basket at the back. Okay. Now, have you had corn toots or laughs? I've had both. Okay. It's quite exciting.

I'm going along mostly quite slowly with one of my grandchildren walking ahead of me with a red flag. But I am loving it. It's a beautiful piece of kit. And the idea really is that in this new world, I don't want to be cluttering up public transport if I've got an alternative. I do have an electric car because I've got a Tesla. But I thought for short distances, why don't I try using the tricycle? I was going to say, you're not going to be going down the Eastern Road, are you? You're not going to be going in the underpass on your trike. I am working up to that. By the time I next speak to you at the moment, I've just been boodling around the side streets going boop, boop. And some people have been saying hello.

Some people have been, actually, one person came out and said, fuck off. Get off the road. but they were smiling as they said it so I'm hoping it's a bit like a tandem I hope because if you go out on a tandem as I have on occasion all you get is benevolence and people smiling and something about it makes you smile I imagine a trike's the same sort of thing do you know my friend Amy Fuller? No. She is a double Olympian snowboarder. She lives near here and she rides a unicycle. Oh, that's cool. So we are planning to go on a little troll together around Putney.

That sounds good. Her leading the way on her unicycle, me following on my tricycle. There's going to be a lot of media interest. You can come and join us on your bicycle. Yes, I'll come on my bike. Very good. Now, are there any other? we're talking punctuation this week and yes you and i are punctuation freaks we love punctuation we do well i'll tell you what i was thinking about during the break was creative punctuation so we were saying that you know overdoing the exclamation

mark is never a good thing but you remember there was a band that chose three punctuation marks or was it four as its name and it said it was because that reflected the excitement shared by the band members and their desire to kind of really shake things up um but then add the dilemma of how on earth do you refer to them and i remember they said that their name could somehow be interpreted so you could interpret in any way you wanted to by choosing three repetitive sounds. So their own choices were things like pow, wow, wow. And that's how you could refer to them. It was probably as confusing as Prince choosing to call himself a symbol because it was the artist formerly known as Prince in the end, wasn't it? Because you couldn't

possibly call him symbol. So yes, it's kind of quite complicated. I mean, the reason that we think punctuation is important is if you don't use it things are confusing i used to collect uh signs and cuttings where the punctuation hasn't i mean i remember a magazine cover that said on the on the cover rachel ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog. You see? Cooking her family. Cooking her family.

There was no punctuation. No, that's mad. I mean, it's completely mad. There's a bus station nearby. When I wrote this down, it said toilets, and then underneath it said only, and then underneath that it said for, and then underneath that it said disabled, and underneath that it said pregnant, and underneath that it said children. There was no punctuation. We got the gist of what it meant, but it actually read toilets only for disabled pregnant children. It's ludicrous, isn't it? Yes, very ludicrous. Yeah, you kind of think that the people of the past, Aristophanes and

his successors, they would have not liked the way that things like the Greengrocer's apostrophe has gone. I tell you what really bothers me. I think we mentioned this in recent days because I keep passing on my bike rides every morning a funeral parlour that has quotes around the word specialist, but it's got scare quotes as we call them, which means, look at this, you know, let's draw attention to this. Whereas, of course, I read those and and trump president trump uses these all the time to mean well it's kind of we're kind of specialists or it's kind of true and i find that move from you know the sort of dubious quotation marks as in this probably is not completely happening i'm i realize that i am now visually you're not looking at me

but i'm doing visually doing that with my fingers for quotes. I think the quote is with two fingers, isn't it? Probably, yeah. And the use of quotes to sort of, you know, mean emphasis, I really can't be doing with. I find it very confusing and quite funny. If people have different views on the whole punctuation issue, do feel to communicate with us. We are at purple at something else dot com. Whatever you are in the world, we love to hear from you. And we've heard from quite a few people this week. Take a leaf out of your book.

This is a little letter from Rosie Williams. Hi, Giles and Susie. I love picking apart language and idioms that usually go by unnoticed in everyday moments. But a conversation with my boyfriend the other day left me with a question mark that I hope you can help me with. Exclamation, she says. He said to me, I'm going to take a leaf out of your book, which got us thinking about where that might come from, more specifically, the leaf part. My best guess was that it originates from the papyrus leaves, which were historically used for writing in Egyptian culture. But my

research drew a blank, another exclamation mark. Rosie, you're overusing the exclamation marks. Are you able to shed some light on this? Question mark, correctly used. Yours, curiously, comma, used, yours curiously, comma, correctly used. So I'm giving her eight out of 10 for punctuation. There's one or two too many exclamations in her nice email. Poor Rosie. Well, thank you, Rosie. I'm nowhere near as pedantic as Giles, and you are almost spot on. I would say that pages of a book have been called leaves for a very long time, but you're right in terms of looking back to the origin, because paper itself goes back to papyrus because it was the pithy stem of that plant that was used for paper just as book is probably from an ancient root meaning the beech tree so in german you'll find the same thing a book is a book and the beech tree

is the booker um so you'll find exactly the same thing and liber which is the root of library in latin was the mark of a tree and that eventually gave us livre in french so they're all connected and biblios um in greek which gave us the bible was also the papyrus plant so yeah there's all sorts of connections there with writing it all goes back to trees and and paper and eventually to the leaves of a book. So taking a leaf out of someone's book just means I'm going to take an example from you. Well done, Rosie Williams. Thank you for communicating.

Somebody is in touch from Foy in Cornwall. It's Philippa Morris. Hi, Susie and Giles. No comma after hi, Susie and Giles, but maybe in email speak, we don't mind that. Yeah. Remember, informality rules in emails, isn't it? Because what we do now is we write as we speak. It's a written spoken communication hybrid. Can I say I like that because I'm having to reply to a lot of emails these days. T-L semicolon D-R. Too long, didn't read. I don't want your life story. I want to know

what you're after. Hi, Giles. Can you do this? Hi, Giles. You know, whatever it may be. Anyway. Hi, Susie and Giles. I have recently read a book called Wedlock, How Georgian Britain's Worst Husband Met His Match, about Mary Eleanor Bowes. This is a distant relative of the late Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon. Mary Eleanor Bowes and her Irish husband, Andrew Robinson Stoney. He at one time became so penniless that the phrase Stoney broke was coined. I wonder if this could be true. So the question is, the phrase Stoney broke. And it was a phrase that people used a lot in Victorian pantomimes. The father of Cinderella, Baron Hardup, mostly in modern pantomimes, was called Baron Stoneybroke of Stoneybroke Hall in Victorian pantomimes. It was such a common

phrase then. What is the origin of Stoneybro broke? Is it to do with this family? No. You said you like concision. No, nothing to do with that. It's one of those great, you know, stories that's been created to account for something. And the origin, as so often, is much more prosaic. It just uses the idea of a stone for solidity. In other words, if you are on the rocks and you're really, really broke, you are as broke as a stone. There's no two ways about it. You are, you know, your brokenness, your poverty is immovable and solid. So that's a metaphor.

There you are. Thank you, Philippa. Maybe you should get in touch with the author of Wedlock, how George and Britain's worst husband met his match match and put him or her right on that. Oh, there's a nice PS. PS, thank you, Giles, for the tip off, Recall My Agent. This is a TV series I was recommending. It's a comedy drama on Netflix. They've done three series, a fourth is in the making.

It's in French. It's about a movie agency in Paris. It's completely sensational. Anyway, Philippa says she loved it and it helped my French. Incidentally, I've only just discovered Silent Witness. Oh. This is what lockdown is doing to me. On season 540 or something.

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, good. You've got a long way to go. That's good. I'm doing this show called Celebrity Gogglebox with my friend Maureen Lippman. Yes. And we're being introduced to things we haven't seen before. And we had a bit of silent witness.

And I'd never seen it. I thought, oh, this is great. So I've now discovered there are literally hundreds of these episodes. There are. I'm loving it. Can I read you one question? Please. Ruthanne Eastwood.

Greetings from across the pond, she says. I'm not going to go into the punctuation because it looks good. My son has enjoyed your podcast since the beginning, but it wasn't until he relocated to Hong Kong that I jumped on the bandwagon with him. I live in Waterford, a little village in the Virginia countryside. Anticipating it would be difficult finding ways to stay together. He had a brilliant idea as we couldn't spend actual time doing things together while he was away. We could listen to your podcast separately and then have something fresh to talk about together oh that's lovely so Ruthann is saying that at university in

LA in the early 70s she had an English tutor who insisted that there was no such word as orientated the word should be oriented and he announced that any people using the wrong word would fail his class and she asked was he right? Has this changed over time? Is it an English versus American thing? It's really, really interesting, this, because if you look it up in the historical dictionary, you will see that disorient just about has it in terms of dates. But we're talking 50 years in terms of the first records which is

nothing in lexicography so it's quite possible they emerged at the same time so we're talking 1655 for disorient and 1704 for disorientate and it all goes back to the idea of the middle ages um you know the countries of the east have been referred to as the Orient, and it goes back to the Latin or Rere, to rise, the rising of the sun. And to disorient is to turn away from the East, whereas if you were orienting or orientating yourself, you were looking towards the East. So it had quite a literal meaning at the beginning. But honestly, there is nothing in it. So I would say that your professor or your English tutor actually wasn't completely right about this. And he was going to personal preferences and, yes, probably national ones as well in terms of American English versus British English. But honestly, you can take the pick.

And if Susie Dent speaks, it's true. It's fact. No, it is. You are the ultimate. No, you're the ultimate arbiter. And that's why I'm now turning to you for your trio. What happens if you're new to our podcast, every week, Susie Dent comes up with three words, real words that feature in the dictionary that she thinks are intriguing,

amusing, interesting, and ought to be given more airtime. What have you got for us this week? Yes. Okay. So this one is is a strange one but I thought it was quite useful for lockdown so if like me or spending your entire time in those Hufflepuffs that I mention often which is your kind of baggy comfy home clothes that you normally just wear at the weekend but let's face it during our lockdowns our global lockdowns probably a lot of us are living in our hufflepuffs you might encounter insordescence and insordescence means filthiness and to be insordescent is to be growing in filthiness and the sore bit is like sorted exactly yeah so you might find that applies to your house hopefully not not, or your clothes or, you know, whatever. But I just thought, you know, certainly kids' bedrooms might be experiencing a bit of insordescence. So that's my first one.

Insordescence. Yes. The other one is, well, the second one is a misdelight, M-I-S, delight. And a misdelight, you can probably guess this one, is pleasure in something wrong. probably guess this one it's pleasure in something wrong and i would use this for example for the occasional habits i have of eating a dessert for breakfast so if someone has made the most amazing cheesecake i might possibly have a total missed delight in eating it for breakfast i just think it's quite useful for lots of different things. Missed delight. It is. Pleasure in something wrong. Oh, that's very good.

Oh, my last affair. It was just a missed delight. Well, there you go. Perfect. There we are. Obviously, you're not speaking personally. And I just like this one again because it's so pithy and it's a form of a verb that we've lost.

And it's lease, L-E-E-S-E. And to lease is to be a loser. So you could say, I really leased this week. I can't wait for the weekend. In other words, I was such a loser this week. I was such a loser. I leased. I think that's a very useful word.

It's just pithy, isn't it? So a loser is busy leasing. Yes. How I leased this week. Let's remember, we may all be losers at points in time, but we won't be permanent losers. So lease is not a permanent condition. We all know what it means to lease once in a while.

Good. Thank you for boosting our morale with that trio of words. You're welcome. I'm going to end with a poem this week. And I've chosen one that was written a long time ago because one of the joys of great poetry is it stands the test of time. And this is written by John Dryden, who lived more in the 17th century. Born 1631, died 1700. And it's a short poem.

I'm pleased to see that it includes commas. It includes inverted commas. It includes a semicolon and a colon. This is a man who knew how to use his punctuation. It's called Happy the Man. But I think he means this inclusively. So this could be Happy the Woman as well. But it wouldn't scan quite in the same way.

Happy the man. Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own. He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Be fair or foul, or rain or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Nor heaven itself upon the past has power, but what has been has been, and I have had my hour.

And we've had our lovely hour with the purple people. And if you want to communicate with us, please do. You will find us purple at somethingelse.com. And let friends know, spread the word, leave a review, get us out there, get us better. Yeah, we read all the reviews as well. So thank you very much for those. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Grace Laker and the gorgeously bearded Gully. Exclamation mark,

exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Ten of them.