Mind your Rs

April 26, 2011
AKUTRs

A whimsical observation, this, from our occasional scribe from the far west, Alex Wade. We have indulged him owing to the sense of festivity gripping the nation, and Swordplay, thanks to the impending royal wedding.

I have been a QPR fan for 35 years. I made the trek from Cornwall to west London yet again on Monday, in the hope that my beloved Rangers would vanquish Hull City and thus secure enough points to make it mathematically certain that they are promoted to the Premier League. Alas, this was not to be the case. A 1-1 draw and wins by Norwich and Cardiff means that although promotion is nigh on guaranteed, the long-suffering faithful such as I have to wait another game (or maybe even two games).

But much though I love all things QPR, there is one thing wrong with the club. I have decided I can no longer stand by and ignore this. I have to speak out. This truth has to speak its name.

QPR is an enemy of the apostrophe.

There, I’ve said it. It hurts, because it’s something negative about the club, but I hope fellow fans will regard this as constructive criticism. QPR needs a root and branch overhaul of its approach to the apostrophe, as the following examples, culled from the matchday programme, fanzines and other literature, will show:

1. Come on you R’s

This is a chant which we all sing to encourage the men in the blue and white hoops. However, when it is written as above, it means that we are encouraging a singular Ranger’s – what? Foot? Chest? Head? Ability to understand Newton’s Third Law of Motion?

2. A Kick Up The R’s

This fanzine has been going for donkey’s years and is very good, save for the rendering of its title. As the image reveals, it again begs the question: a kick up the solo Ranger’s what? Backside, I presume?

3. The R’s travel to Watford for the next away game

This helpful piece of information is rendered nonsensical by the needless insertion of the apostrophe.

4. R’s star man, Adel Taraabt, was on song again

This means that a star man, owned by a solo Ranger, played well. It does not mean that Rangers’ (or Rs’) star man played well.

5. The Rs will soon be regarded as the best team in Europe

Note the merciful absense of a rogue apostrophe in this, an example of a correctly written piece of prose.

The message is, or at least should be, clear. Denizens of QPR, whether fans, players, coaching, commercial or admin staff, unite and SORT OUT THE ONGOING MISUSE OF THE APOSTROPHE IN SHEPHERD’S BUSH.

Otherwise I will have no alternative but to contact the Apostrophe Protection Society.

 

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If you’re Joey Barton, attack is not the best form of defence

May 17, 2012

Interesting times, these, in the life of Joey Barton.

If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.

In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.

What, then, should Barton do? Should he:

(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or

(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and

(c) Add an apology to said statement, or

(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.

The answer is not (d).

The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.

Gunning foglessly for clarity

May 15, 2012

A fine piece, this, on Winston Churchill’s gift for language and the obscurantism that goes with so much corporate communication.

But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:

Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.

Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index.  But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.

We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.

The Gunning Fog index is 9.585

Spin at the Leveson Inquiry

May 9, 2012
Leveson witch hunt

The idea that Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry’s QC, Robert Jay, are in need of PR advice is intriguing.

Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.