Monday, December 23, 2013

The Logophilius Christmas List

Dear Santa,

You’ve disappointed me in the past, so much so that I considered not sending you my wish list this year. On the other hand, I’ve disappointed myself a few times, too, so I figure I should give you another chance.

This year, my Christmas wishes aren’t solely for me, but for all of the English-loving bibliophiles, logodaedalists, and graphomaniacs out there. Here’s what we would like for Christmas:
  • Over the next year, have your magical elves remove all the unnecessary apostrophes on all the grocers’ signs, storefronts, and tea party placards. By November, you should have enough apostrophes to stand in for everyone at Fox News for all of 2015.
  • Teach the world’s children the difference between i.e. and e.g. and to stop using both.
  • Stop filling young people’s stockings with like and fill them with descriptive verbs. Or at least thoughtful pauses.
  • Stop Justin Bieber. Just, stop him.
  • Let all the world know that trust-fund douchebags with Ivy-league degrees their fathers bought them are entitled, but that movies and books are only titled.
  • Please make all Internet trolls look more like trolls with each new inflammatory comment.
  • Alert English teachers everywhere stop harping on split infinitives and sentence-ending prepositions and focus instead on teaching students how to write well.
  • No more zombies interposed into pre-existing literature of any grade. Pretty please.
  • Let everyone know the joys of Seasonal Work.
  • Put anyone who writes looser instead of loser on the Naughty list until they learn better.
  • And finally, I wish everyone around the world will find in their stocking this Christmas an old-fashioned literally that means “literally” and not “the opposite of literally.”
I know this is a big order, but if anyone can do it, you can.

This is your last chance, Santa. Even if you can deliver on only one of these Christmas wishes,* it will reaffirm my faith in you as a legendary bringer of jollity and neat-o stuff.

But if January comes, and everyone is all like, “This Belieber literally came out of left field and like asked me if I wanted to see that like awesome-looking new movie, e.g., Moby-Dick, The Zombie Whale, so I said yes because I didn’t want to look like a looser, and I don’t own a copy of Seasonal Work.” then I give up.

And it’ll be nothing but Festivus next December.

* Please make it the Justin Bieber one.