SMART WATER?

"Don't say anything, don't say anything, don't say anything..." whispered my brain.

I need to listen better, I reckon. Before long I was quibbling over: whether 'metadata' is one or two words, how best to use hyphens with split compound adjectives, what you call the future perfect tense, and whether or not bullet lists should end with full stops.

Go on, do an eye-roll. I would. The thing is, I think, even I have limits to talking about this stuff. At some point or other, you have to let it go and ask whether or not what you're writing actually makes sense to the person who's going to read it... don't you?

And anyway, language is evolving! It's changing all the time - why, even yesterday, I was out for a walk, wondering why sign writers are currently abandoning grammar...

There's a bus stop near where I live which sports an advert for fancy water. On one side, the giant blue poster at the end of the shelter says:

"sun's out, tops off."

... which I don't understand. On the obverse side, over two more pictures of dripping water bottles, they've printed:

"hydrate. bye thirst."

It's the future obviously. Capital letters are obsolete because no-one's really bothered to hold down a shift key. Or perhaps... perhaps capital letters look a little old-fashioned these days? Also, you're now allowed to use sentences with no verbs...

But I'm digressing a bit. My point is that language is changing, and it's a bit daft to stick so rigidly to arcane rules that might no longer apply, for what, sentimental, or insecurity reasons? Writing well has always been about establishing a good connection with people. Can I get what's in my head or in my heart, into yours?

If an old rule makes a thing grammatically correct but it's going to confuse just about everyone who sees it, it isn't really their fault for not being educated in the 1950s. The burden is on the writer there, isn't it?

That's how I see it. And I'm a person who's nerdily obsessive about this stuff! I believe punctuation and good sentence structure make writing fly, and on that flight you can bring readers with you and make them hear and think and feel!

Or of course, you can leave them scratching their heads at the bus stop.

Maybe just maybe though, there's a whole demographic of people who get what 'Sun's out, tops off' means, and who guzzle down their smart water because a poster told them to hydrate without any capital letters.

It isn't my demographic; I think that's okay. But if the old rules are to disappear in the future, and if the way to establish connection through text is reformed for generation Z, or generation AA, or generation Post-Brexit or whatever they'll eventually be called, then I'll go along with that and keep writing whatever I think will work.

And if you've read this far, I kind of hope that proves my point.

Anyway, my brain was right. I should probably have kept quiet in the meeting.