Modi opens India's railway bridge to connect with Kashmir
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Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Gen Z says the em dash is the ‘coolest punctuation ever'
Gen Z: I am — and I don't say this lightly — so busy. Boomer: What's with all the dashes? Is Morse code having a moment? Em dashes are a vibe. One X user calls them the 'coolest punctuation ever' — the Charli XCX of grammar. Confusing and jarring? Sassy and smart — they draw attention. More like a fax machine: clunky, awkward and best left in the last century. The em dash is everywhere, according to The Washington Post, because it's ChatGPT's favourite punctuation mark. Is that a new Turing test component: asking if AI prefers dashes or colons? 'We — and ChatGPT — have a soft spot for the em dash,' an OpenAI employee told the Post. A journalist called it 'my emotional support punctuation mark'. Once used by Emily Dickinson in her poetry; now therapy for chatbots. Why the winky face? Is that a joke about my bad eye? No, I mean the ; It's actually called a semicolon and it's the 'most elegant and elusive of punctuation marks' to both The Spectator and myself. So jarring. You know they're used only half as much now as they were in 2000? Because of your generation's inability to practise decent grammar? Because the semicolon is old and stuffy. It's a monocle in punctuation form. Excuse me but I agree with The Spectator: 'Like napkins, black tie and having a glass of champagne before lunch, the semicolon remains a bulwark against civilisational decline.' Forget mad dictators and ravaging wars. Boomers say the semicolon will save us! I'm sorry that we value the English language. But I saw on X some old bloke named Kurt Vonnegut said semicolons 'represent absolutely nothing' and are only used to 'show you went to college'. I'm not taking literary advice from someone who calls the author of Slaughterhouse-Five 'some old bloke named Kurt'. Stop being aggy. You're giving hostile punctuator vibes. Is that the 2025-friendly way of calling someone a grammar Nazi? It's when you overuse punctuation so your texts look like they're from a thriller. How can a tiny mark come across as hostile? Take the Boomer obsession with ellipsis. Go on… Exactly what I mean! TikToker Elâ got 527,000 likes on her clip noting everyone over 60 insists on ending texts with '…' It softens the end of a sentence. It seems like you're planning something sinister. Eg 'My mum always texts me like 'dad's not home…'' And what's wrong with that? 'It makes it sound like she's buried him in the backyard.' Ironic from someone who thinks a skull emoji is an appropriate reaction to a joke. We've spoken about this, it means I'm dying from laughter. So what should I end my texts with? A full stop? If you want to be shady, sure. It's 'shady' to end a clause with good grammar? Full stops give such sus energy! According to Stylist, if someone uses a full stop 'they're angry and want you to know they're angry, but they're not in the mood for a direct confrontation'. Or maybe they're just proficient in English? Put it this way: if my mum texts saying 'I'm not annoyed.' I know to turn up with flowers and a bottle of Whispering Angel. It's three words and a dot, you're reading too much into it. No cap, I've had friendships end over a bitchy full stop instead of a kissy face. I'm not sure what 'no cap' means, but that really does bring things to a full stop. Your jokes are as cringey as your punctuation habits. This has got me thinking about the difference between your generation and the semicolon. Only one has valid use in the 21st century? Only one is capable of stringing together complex thoughts.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
William Boyd: How I turned Chekhov into an opera
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Tim Dowling: the dog has seen my mother-in-law's ghost – or possibly just a bug
The new dog is now a year old, and her bedtime habits are firmly established: when I retire for the night I invariably find the dog already lying on my side of the bed, her chin resting on my pillow. At this point I usually push her off, whereupon she will retreat to her own – perfectly nice – bed, or sleep on the bare floorboards, depending on the night-time temperature. At around five the dog will leap back on to the bed and tunnel under the duvet head-first, stretching out between my wife and me, leaving only her back legs sticking out the top. That's how things remain until one of us decides to get up. It's not ideal, but it's a routine. The daytime routine is looser. The general rhythm is well established – eat, walk, sleep, walk, eat – but there are random moments when the dog seems to require additional, unspecified engagement, when she sits down next to me on the sofa, places a gentle paw on my forearm and gives me a look that says: we need to talk. 'I'm just watching this,' I say, pointing at the television. The dog turns to look at the screen, and then slowly rolls her eyes back toward me. It's easy to read too much into a dog's expression, but at times like these I sense deep wells of frustration. Maybe, I think, she just wants me to change the channel to a show with dogs in it. The next day in the park the dog is lively but obedient, off the lead but never straying out of sight, playful with other dogs but willing to take no for an answer. She behaves perfectly right up until the end, when we encounter a woman in a long coat with two dogs of her own. Shortly after we pass by, my dog suddenly stops, turns and hares off after them. I whistle and call her name, but the dog ignores me and follows the woman – a complete stranger – in the other direction, all the while staring up at her with a look of true devotion. 'Well, we had some good times,' I say, twirling my lead. Eventually the woman is obliged to stop and head back towards me. We meet halfway, my dog still fixated on the woman, who smiles at me and shrugs. 'It's because I have …' I don't quite hear the last word – something like 'spraahtz' – which in the discomfort of the moment I take to be a foreign term for a powerful form of canine magnetism, perhaps as practised in remote parts of Belgium, or maybe Poland. Then the woman reaches out and hands me a tiny dead fish. 'Oh, sprats,' I say. 'They love them,' she says. That evening my wife, my oldest son and I are watching television, while the dog sits next to me and stares at my ear. 'So the take-home message is: we need to get some sprats,' I say. 'I've seen them in the pet store,' my wife says. 'Apparently they can't get enough of them,' I say. 'Be quiet,' she says. 'I'm trying to follow this.' Suddenly the dog barks once, leaps from the sofa, slides across the coffee table and lands on the other side. 'What was that for?' says the oldest one. The dog sits and looks up, staring at nothing with fearsome concentration. 'What is it?' my wife says. 'It's like she's witnessing some kind of apparition,' I say. Perhaps an apparition holding a little dead fish. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion 'Have you seen a ghost?' my wife says. 'Is it my mother?' The dog stares, unflinching. 'Actually I think she might just be watching a bug,' I say. 'If it's my mother, give me your paw,' my wife says. The dog takes two steps forward, and places its right paw into my wife's outstretched hand. 'It is my mother!' my wife shouts. The oldest one and I exchange a brief glance as if to say: bit weird. 'Give me your paw again if she misses me,' my wife says. The dog obliges. 'That dog only knows one trick,' the oldest one says. 'And that's it.' 'A tiny hovering insect,' I say. 'Or a baby spider floating on the draught from the windows.' 'Thank you for the message from beyond,' my wife says. 'Now go lie down, I'm trying to watch this.' The dog climbs on to the sofa and curls up next to me, wearing a look of profound dissatisfaction. We watch the telly in silence for a moment. 'So yeah, sprats,' I say. 'Oh my God,' my wife says. 'We'll have to rewind!'
