Well, won't you look at that. The Guardian is today running a feature about The Rise Of Poetry In Advertising, in which it discusses that McDonald's ad I'm a fan of and tells you what you'd already learnt via Words & Fixtures (ever the trendsetter) some weeks ago.
I was interested to discover, however, that's it's good old green champion Pete Postlethwaite who reads the I'm afraid inferior and somewhat on-bandwagon-jumping, if nostalgic Betjemanesque (so I'm told), poem on the Cathedral City ad. I do like PP, especially after seeing a) his moving bow-taking following his first-night performance as bonkers old Prospero in The Tempest at the Royal Exchange last year and b) him regularly buying The Big Issue while he was doing the Manchester run.
Back to the feature, and I do think they make a good point about bringing poetry to the masses. You can't really complain, can you?
Anyway, forget that: check out that nice picture of cheese on toast. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
This post is dedicated to my brother-in-law. He laid down the grammar gauntlet, and who am I to deny him an answer? The challenge:
"What is the word and symbol for a ?!. Apparently a single punctuation mark was once created for the two. Anyway I looked on wiki and didn't see the answer. I did find this quote though;
Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes. F. Scott Fitzgerald"
My reply:
"With regards to your punctuation query, as far as I know, there is no such thing in proper usage, although an exclamation mark is often used after a question mark in informal writing such as letters, emails, websites etc (but obviously these are full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar, so they're hardly going to be held up as examples of good writing) and in cartoon strips and graphic novels (where the rules are different - it's fantasy!). For the purpose of describing the phenomenon in this usage, some bright spark (an enterprising advertising bod, no less) came up with the name 'interrobang' or 'interabang' - there's more at this Wikipedia link (although we all know not to believe everything we read on Wikipedia, so who knows). If you want to know more about ligatures, see this Words & Fixtures post.
"It is generally considered bad form to use punctuation marks together, so most people (well, writers and editors, anyway) inwardly groan when they see, for example, reams of exclamation marks together, which happens a lot these days in emails and texts. An exclamation mark is supposed to create enough impact on its on, and it should be used sparingly otherwise the impact is lost. You may notice the general lack of exclamation marks in the broadsheets while tabloids, however, love them. Go figure.
"An exclamation mark following a question mark is unnecessary and is merely emphasising that you'd noticed something or find something hilarious and are pointing it out, so it's a bit like showing off. As The Great Gatsby author you quote so eloquently details, it's kind of akin to laughing at your own jokes.
"Hope this helps. Regards etc..."
So there you have it. Interrobang: the upstart punctuation superhero on the block. Or possibly a super-strength drain unblocker with a crap sense of humour. Any more random grammar queries, dear reader, please feel free to get in touch via the usual communication channels.
(By weird coincidence, while writing this, the interrobang symbol appeared in my Twitter feed after one of my peeps used the new Retweet facility to share something by @FakeAPStylebook, who uses the mark as their avatar and seems to be a grammar geek. We like.)
One of my Manchester Literature Festival chums has been busily adding to the Southbank Centre's GPS Global Poetry System project (to which we'll return at a later date), and her latest posting is most interesting to an arty-farty Francophile word lover like myself.
It's about an installation by the artist Ben Vautier, known simply as Ben, who lives in Nice en la belle France. It says "Il faut se mefier des mots", which means "beware of words". Well, I say.
So I've been doing a little wider reading on Monsieur Ben, who seems quite an interesting chap. There's a bit here on his life and work (nice ski goggles, Monsieur. My friend Julian has some suspiciously similar). I've learnt that some of his sculptures are not unlike Jean Tinguely's machines, an exhibition of which is on at Tate Liverpool right now and runs until 10 January: Joyous Machines: Michael Tandy and Jean Tinguely.
(When I first heard about this show, BTW, I got all excited because I thought it had something to do with the director of The Science Of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and, I just learnt, the first episode of The Flight Of The Conchords, although I was just saying yesterday how I'm not really into that, if I'm totally honest. Too much singing. Anyway, I was wrong, obviously. That's Michel Gondry. Obviously.)
So back to Ben, and you see a lot of cartes postales of his phrases on sale in trendy shops in Paris. They always remind me of Magritte's Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe, from The Treachery Of Images series (La Trahison Des Images 1928–29). Just thought I'd share that.
Sixty-four per cent of Spar shoppers are flummoxed by all that gubbins on wine labels. Fact.
Helpfully, 'so near so...' has found a way to get round this: printing labels in local dialect. Because obviously that's the solution. Not getting rid of all those airy fairy phrases or anything - 'plummy undertones', 'raspberry notes', 'goes well with curry dishes' - you know, that kind of thing. No, what Joe Public really needs is a description written in a really broad, really fake accent, targeted at the specific geographical area in which JP happens to live. Cor lummy bloimey, guvnor! Fuckh a duckh, mate! Hoots, mon!
(And what makes me really chortle is that they have only labelled up one wine: Merlot. Because that one particularly, out of all the wines in the whole of France - nay, the whole of the world - is the one that nobody's ever tasted before. FFS.)
Who does the work on this stuff? Did they misunderstand the brief about making the language easier to understand, but somehow the client thought it was great, cos it's, like, ironic or something? More to the point, are they looking for copywriters?
This, Exhibit A, is Favourites (The People's Restaurant), the current ad for McDonald's. It features an ode to Drive Thrus, Coke and Chicken McNuggets, and promises something for everyone who is 'just passing by'. (C'mon, you must've seen it.)
I have to admit I've been sucked in by the poem; I like it. It has a good rhythm and a clever simplicity. It's also read in a pleasant lilting Liverpudlian accent by the actor David Morrissey (star of such shows as Red Riding, State Of Play...). It was written, so it says in trade mag Campaign, by the copywriters/creative team Tony Malcolm and Guy Moore, aka Tony & Guy (yes, like the hair care bunch), for the agency Leo Burnett, and the background music is apparently the opening track from Stephen Frears' flick The Grifters (I can't remember: I've only seen the film once, when it came out in 1990, which is an awful long time ago now). If it is, then I find it a bit odd given the movie's tagline: Seduction. Betrayal. Murder. Who's conning who?. Er, Pelman versus McDonald's Corporation, anyone?
Anyway, forget that; I've been known to consume the odd Filet-O-Fish for my wife in my time, so I'm not going to get all sanctimonious and hypocritical. Back to the poetry. It was on a TES online forum, no less, where I learnt that the Favourites piece follows the same pattern as a work of great importance by the famous Australian artist Rolf Harris dating back to 1964. The Court Of King Caractacus, as it is entitled, starts like this: 'Now the ladies of the harem of the court of King Catactacus, were just passing by.' The next verse begins: 'Now the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Catactacus, were just passing by.' Then: 'Now the boys who put the powder on the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Catactacus, were just passing by.' You get the picture and I guess you see where the fine fans of the Times Educational Supplement are coming from.
So, 'The It bods with their taps and prods eating a Big Mac while writing their blogs, were just passing by.' I have to say, I often chow down on a Big Mac while writing my blog.
