Using proper punctuation is not aggressive – full stop

In fairness, text messaging was never designed for us oldies; we’re of a time when poor handwriting got you a whack across the knuckles – and woe betide you if you left out the full stop.

It was the late, great Con Houlihan who famously said that a man who could misuse an apostrophe was capable of anything – and he didn’t mean it in a good way.

How he’d hold his head in his hands if he were still around for the world of texting; actually, that’s not a great analogy, because Con had a habit of covering his face with his hands all the time anyway.

But for Con – who never typed and whose handwriting was a spidery scrawl where each A4 page usually fitted no more than three sentences – punctuation was everything.

His halcyon days were in the Evening Press where, by common consensus, his work was so erudite and original that a swathe of readers bought the paper to just enjoy his column alone.

Later on, after the demise of the Press, he moved to the Sunday World and later the Irish Star, where he brought the same scholarly discipline to his every piece.

Con never darkened the door of the Star but instead his column – a raft of loose pages – would be dropped in by hand, then typeset and redelivered to him for proofing and approval.

And if a comma was lost or added, a semi-colon found where he insisted a colon should be, Con would spot it quicker than a cat would spot a mouse – and he’d pounce with even greater speed and purpose.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app

The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.