A Plague of Frogs Episode Five Recently, I have received a number of letters. Which has recently become more common. What is unusual is that many of them distinguish themselves by errors. I do not mean errors of sentiment or fact. I mean errors of spelling. Grammatical irregularities. Punctuation deployed with what I can only describe as optimism. Capital letters applied at random. Mysterious italics. And unwarranted bold font. One correspondent wrote “your” when they meant “you’re.” Twice. In the same sentence. I was forced to write. ― Dear Cadbury, I write, as ever, in the matter of Freddos and Roses. But today I also write on the matter of language. It has come to my attention that your recent correspondence contains several errors which I feel, in good conscience, I cannot allow to pass unremarked. Your last letter referred to “the tins content.” No apostrophe. The tin’s content. If the tin possesses the content, the apostrophe records this relationship. Without it, the tin merely stands there, content, in the emotional sense. Which, given the current range, seems unlikely. “Your” is a second-person possessive pronoun. It belongs to the person addressed. Not to the person being discussed. That would be “their.” Which is a different problem entirely. “You’re,” meanwhile, is a contraction. Two words compressed into one. The apostrophe marks the absence of the “a.” It is doing a job. These are not interchangeable. They never have been. I would observe, in passing, that had we retained the use of “thee” as the second person singular pronoun — distinct from “you” as the plural — none of this confusion would have arisen. The very archaism we abandoned in the name of simplicity would have prevented this entirely. No ambiguity. No apostrophe debate. No letter to Cadbury. I consider this worth noting. There was also the matter of “compliment” and “complement.” You wrote that the hazelnut “compliments the caramel.” I have no doubt the hazelnut is very polite. However, what you presumably meant is that the hazelnut complements the caramel. Completes it. Goes with it. These are different words. They do different work. The distinction, like the Marzipan, matters. I raise this not from pedantry. I am aware that pedantry is what people call attention to detail when the detail is someone else’s. I raise it because language is the tin. Meaning is what you put in it. And when the tin is dented, when the labelling is unclear, when the contents shift in transit — something is lost. Something that cannot be retrieved by a focus group or a shelf metric. I confess this has been on my mind more generally. There is a mode of communication, Mr Cadbury, which has come to prominence in recent years, and which I have observed with what I can only call increasing concern. It is called, I believe, text speak. You will know it. “Gr8.” “U ok?” “Lol.” “Lol” is not a word. I have looked into this. It is an acronym meaning “laughing out loud,” which nobody who uses it is actually doing. I have received messages reading “lol” at moments of no discernible comedy. “Just saw your letter. Lol.” I was not aware that a formal complaint about confectionery constituted entertainment. I sincerely hope that neither age nor illness will ever cause them to pml. Or rofl. The rolling, in particular, seems inadvisable. I say this with some knowledge of what elderly laughter does to one’s undergarments. I have been considering what this mode of communication would do to the literature we hold most dear. Take, for example, the balcony scene. Romeo and Juliet. Act Two. Scene Two. “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” In text speak, Mr Cadbury: “yo bitch ur window” “lol r u up” “Juliet 🌞” And Juliet’s reply: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name.” In text speak: “romeo romeo wtf u at” “srsly tho ditch ur surname” Shakespeare spent twenty-two words on “wherefore art thou Romeo.” Twenty-two words which have echoed for four hundred years. The text speak version would not survive until morning. I do not expect the language to stand still. It never has. The tin has always changed. New varieties arrive. Old ones depart. I have made my peace with this. Broadly. But there is a difference between change and attrition. Between a language that grows and a language that shrinks. Between the Lime Barrel being replaced by something and the Lime Barrel simply being removed without a forwarding address. I close, Mr Cadbury, with a thought. There is a word, recently arrived in common usage, which the young have reclaimed in what appears to be a spirit of defiance. The word is brat. I understand it now means: confident, a little messy, honest about one’s contradictions, unwilling to be tidied away. I hope, Mr Cadbury, that you will consider this letter in that spirit. I am eighty years old. I write long letters about apostrophes. I mourn the Montelimar. I have reconstructed the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene in text speak in order to make a point about confectionery. I think, on reflection, that qualifies. Yours, in continued correspondence, grammatical integrity, and not entirely undisturbed equanimity, K. Butler (Mr) Aged 80. Well Brat.