NO UPTERIPTING (SIC) (# 74,967)
This innocent plea came from my 4 year old tonight, as she demanded to be heard (ie: no interrupting). Unbeknown to her, she has cooked up a word that trumps the original with its phonetic chutzpah and never-heard-beforeness. Only children can create genius.
Which brings us onto the adult world of ‘sic’. For years, it’s been the cane across our knuckles in English lessons. Yet now, in this age of digital counter-spelling, it runs rife. Lyrics, texts and speech have never been freer. People feel words first then release them any damn way they like. But it’s not all rosy. Sounds and shapes are homogenizing, characters are doubling up. Some of our 26 letters are looking at voluntary redundancy. It is to you I turn to vote out the idle and impotent to make space for new hybrid characters, half consonant, half vowell, multi-purpose literary compost. Go glug on the baby bio and see what weeds emerge from your throat.
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