The Trouble with 'Texts'

Not to Mention 'TikTok'

I don’t know Lucy Moss, a British theatre director, but she has pissed me off by being quoted online as follows: "My mom's sister's son, the baby of the family. I love that he has a phone now so I can send him sort of memes of geese and stuff. He texts like a grandma, with correct capitalization and punctuation."

            How cute.

            Someone who capitalizes and punctuates correctly. Why would anybody of any age want, except comically, to do that? Perhaps, conceivably, for the sake of clarity and punch? That person is like a grandma, eh?

            And that's bad?

            I see.

            Let's just leave it.

            No, let's don't.

             I happen to know any number of grandmas. And have known. And could go into it further, but won’t — don't get me started.

            "My mom's sister's son"? That wouldn't be the child of your aunt, and therefore your god damn cousin, would it?

            Would it kill you, punctuation and capitalization aside, to use commonly accepted words?

            I wonder if you have noticed this:

            No one can pronounce the word texts.

            Text, yes. Tex, yes. Texty, yes, if there be such a word. Textuality, yes, I guess. Texas, okay. But texts is too jammed up for the human tongue. If you insist on trying to articulate texts, it comes out "tek-t-ssss." And that second hyphen (if not both of them) betokens (inadequately) a glottal stop, a strangled gulp, a traffic jam of consonant (actually non-consonant) sounds. And that sss — don’t take my word for it — is a feeble hiss. If you make a genuine effort to pronounce all of texts in one syllable, it will not fly. It will wind up as something that almost rhymes with ecstasy. But without the spark, without the flow: an oral experience by no means ecstatic.

            And do you know why twixt, say, or amidst, or Baptist, is pronounceable but texts isn't? Because twist and amidst date back to when English was still in touch with the tongue and the ear -- a bodily affair. Texts is what we might call a post-oral term. It is not designed to be spoken.

            There are so many such terms, these days. Consider the name of a medium that we may hope your cousin eschews:

            TikTok.

            Couldn't have been spelled TickTock could it? For the sake of, I don't know, coherence with a profoundly irregular and unmatchably vigorous verbal tradition spanning hundreds of years?

            Am I about to suggest that TikTok is unpronounceable? Certainly not. What I am about to say is this: if the language did not feel a practical use for the c in tick and in tock --

            Well look here. I just realized another thing wrong with TikTok.

            TikTok does not cohere with the heart. It does not cohere with the clock. It is in too much of a hurry. Listen to the heart. Or the clock. Or Keats:

                        To fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

                        To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

                        With a sweet kernel, to set budding more,

                        And still more, later flowers for the bees.

            But here's what I was going to say is wrong with TikTok:

            A user of TikTok, I gather -- either an influencer (ugly word, should be pronounced like influenza) or an idler -- is a TikToker.

            And a toker is one who tokes.

            Don't get me wrong. I have no problem (except of course smoke in the lungs is not good) with toking. Ask your grandma. I have a problem with Toker pronounced Tocker.

            I am not going to argue with you about this. I'm a grandpa. But this shit here is organic:

            The c's are there, in tick and tock, for a reason.

            "Sort of memes of geese and stuff," though, now, that works for me. I know an actual goose, named Gloria, lives right down the road from us. She goes Wonnnk, no c necessary. Because that n is there, see -- there could be a goose medium called Wonk-Wonk and the participants could be Wonk-Wonkers, wouldn't bother me a bit.

            I was going to bring John Milton into this, but it's late and -- isn't it nice to take a whiff of Keats? To "plump the hazel shells," OMG.