Saturday, June 19: Mississippi Mud
DASHES AND SPLATS
by John M. Floyd
Sounds like a football game, right? Actually, I’m referring to marks of punctuation. And since we at this blog are writers ourselves, and have already done a number of columns about punctuation and several about the titles of stories/novels/movies, well, today I thought I’d put those two subjects together.
Wild style
Colons, commas, apostrophes, hyphens, etc., are common in titles — but the following are a few examples of unusual punctuation used in titles of fictional works.
NOTE : Some of these involve special characters or other strange content rather than just punctuation. But what can I say? I couldn’t resist.
Multiple colons: Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach
Exclamation Point: Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
Multiple exclamation points: Tora! Tora! Tora!
Slash: Face/Off (Yes, I know, it makes no sense.)
Dash and hyphen: Jim Thorpe — All-American
Multiple hyphens: They Went That-A-Way and That-A-Way
Multiple commas: Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Parentheses: (500) Days of Summer
Question Mark: Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? (or framed Roger Rabbit?)
Non-possessive apostrophe: Singin’ in the Rain
Multiple apostrophes: Rock ’n’ Roll Frankenstein
Fraction: Nine ½ Weeks
Single letter: M
Single letter repeated: Sssssss
Repeated word: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
Repeated phrase: The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
Asterisk: Bat*21
Multiple asterisks (triple splat): M*A*S*H
Multiple conjunctions: Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice
Misspelled word: Killer Klowns from Outer Space
Number only: 21
Number (spelled funny): Se7en
Time only: 11:14
Date only: 11/4/08 (documentary about Obama’s election day)
Ellipses: Slap Her . . . She’s French
Multiple ellipses: Tick . . . Tick . . . Tick
Equals sign: E=mc2
Pound sign: Waterhole # 3
Dollar sign: $ (heist movie with Goldie Hawn and Warren Beatty)
Per cent sign: 99 and 44/100% Dead
Ampersand: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Multiple ending punctuation: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?
Music to the ear
The following are some titles that have no punctuation (except for one question mark and one apostrophe), but that I like just because of the way they sound. Let’s face it, they got rhythm:
- At Play in the Fields of the Lord
- The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera
- The Sins of Rachel Cade
- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
- Who the Hell Is Wanda Fuca?
- Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead
Hey, maybe you can’t judge a story by its title — but if a story’s good already, a clever title makes it better.
Lean Mean Thirteen?
While we’re talking about titles (or at least since we’ve abandoned all pretense of enlightenment and are at play in the fields of Mindless Trivia) I’d like to offer one more item. It’s a poem I wrote called “An Organized Life,” and serves as a good example of why I’m not a poet:
I got Capricorn One at the video store,
Then saw Two for the Road on TV;
After Three Musketeers and Four Desperate Men
An intriguing idea came to me.I watched Five Easy Pieces, Six Bridges to Cross,
Followed by The Magnificent Seven;
Then I rented 8 Seconds and went to Netflix
to locate Fahrenheit 9/11.Ten Commandments and Ocean’s Eleven came next,
And Twelve O’Clock High was half done
When my wife threw a kink in my orderly plan —
She rented 2001.
And, in closing, the weirdest title of all:
The Incredibly Strange People Who Watched All Six Seasons of LOST and Became Mixed-Up Writers!!?
You wrote: And, in closing, the weirdest title of all:
The Incredibly Strange People Who Watched All Six Seasons of LOST and Became Mixed-Up Writers!!?
And I say: Hey! Who you calling strange? And mixed up?!!! Not me. Everything’s perfectly clear here.
Barb, I’m paraphrasing here, but I once read a great quote on the subject of odd writers by, I think, Lawrence Block: “Anyone who spends most of his or her waking hours in the company of imaginary people–people that he or she INVENTED–probably has to be a little strange.”
As for LOST addicts, I haven’t yet heard any quotes about them (us), and maybe that’s just as well.
Gee, John, I thought for sure you’d include Victor Borge’s take on punctuation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF4qii8S3gw
Thanks for posting that link, Rob. I first saw that clip years ago, and I love it. Remember the one with Borge and Dean Martin?
Misspelled Word: Pet Sematary
I’ve always wondered why Stephen King decided to spell “cemetery” incorrectly . . . for a while, when I was younger, I even thought “sematary” was an alternate (and acceptable) way of spelling the word! Maybe used primarily in Maine or something.
My guess is that King spelled it that way because that’s the way a child might have chosen to spell it, on the makeshift sign in the novel. But you’re right, I bet the title misled many a person into thinking that might be an alternate spelling of cemetery.
How about Inglourious Basterds?
Z
Leigh, are you referring to the 1969 Costa-Gravas thriller or are you trying to tell us that you’re bored?
Capricorn One is definitely on my list of Friday night potato chip movies.
John: Yes, “sematary” is the way a kid spelled the word in the novel. But why would a grown-up writer adopt that spelling himself and even use it in the title of one of his books? There is something deeper going on here, I think. My theory is: King probably figured, in the story the Indian summer-sky turns blood red, the dead rise from their graves to feast on the flesh of the living, and a Wendigo is more and more often glimpsed roaming the woods behind the house . . . so conventional rules–and spellings–might as well be rendered null and void.
Or maybe I am reading too much into this . . . ?
Your theory’s probably right, Yoshinori. I read the book long ago but had forgotten the Indian burial ground part. Hey, any story that features the Wendigo wandering the woods is a good one, in my view.
Pet Sematary was not one of my favorite King novels, nor were Christine or Gerald’s Game or The Dark Half or From a Buick 8 and a few others. But I liked most of them. Not that it matters, but I absolutely loved The Stand, The Dead Zone, It, Misery, The Green Mile, and half a dozen others. And I’ve enjoyed most of his short stories.
And yep, I liked Capricorn One. I thought I was probably the only one who did!
Yeah, I loved all the King novels you loved, except for The Stand, which I haven’t read yet (I know, shame on me!). But I also love Pet Sematary. I especially like the way it starts very slowly; King takes a lot of time paiting a picture of a lovable and almost-perfect American family trying to build a life in a small town. But right from the get-go, when even a simple word like “cemetery” is misspelled and never corrected by the author, let alone one of the characters, you know something is seriously amiss here!
Oh yeah, The Shining, Needful Things, and Bag of Bones are my favorites too!