No, not YOU, dearest readers.
I'm talking about an English professor at a local graduate school (let THAT sink in ... English graduate level) who posted about a newly-released novel and put the novel's title in quotation marks. Also, I'm talking about a national newspaper that refuses to underline or use italics for novel titles in the book section of their paper; the titles are in quotation marks.
Quotation marks! I mean, seriously. What. The. Fuck.
Novel titles are NEVER put into quotation marks unless you're a moron, a college English professor who should be fired, or the New York Times Book Review. I actually had to unsubscribe to the NYT BR online because I couldn't tolerate the stupidity. Imagine posting the entire review of books while publishing each title incorrectly punctuated.
It's inane. It's lame. And it's WRONG.
But this ... this is heinous. This is contemptible. This quotation-marks-for-titles crap is grammatical sacrilege.
If we allow idiots and other imbeciles to change the rules of grammar at their whim (because they're dumb as shit), what's next? How in the name of Ben Johnson are people supposed to identify chapters from books if the book titles are reduced to quotation marks? You simply cannot punctuate a novel title in quotation marks unless it is a very short, short novel, much shorter than a novella, so short, in fact, that it's a short story.
How will we punctuate titles of short stories or non-epic poems? Shall we simply put brackets around them? Oh, yes, let's do. Let's put brackets around Joyce's "Araby" ... Oh, so sorry ... [Araby] ... and call it fucking algebra. Ummmm, I mean [algebra].
Yes, I'm mad. I am mad as hell at people who keep changing the rules, like NOT putting two spaces at the end of a sentence when typing. Oh, sure, computer keys are not the same as typewriter keys, which is why the two-space rule was created in the first place: identical key sizes in the letter keys and the punctuation keys. I still, for the most part, adhere to it, and I have been told I'll NEVER get published because some young asshole will believe I am a hack for doing so.
Yes, and so was Hemingway. A fucking hack. A fucking hack who lived in the hills with white elephants. Put a bracket around that shit, stuff it in your pipe, and smoke it. Or maybe blow your head off with it. Either one. I don't care.
Well, if it's good enough for college professors and good enough for the NYT, I suppose it's good enough for the common charlatan. It is not, however, good enough for me, so stop that shit right now before I have to bitch-slap someone. Oh, so sorry ... let me novel-title that for you: "Before I Have to Bitch-Slap Someone."
