the typo

The cleansing. That is what they called it. The British. Americans were quick to copy their forefathers. And so it spread to the United States of America. Publishers were hanged. Authors died of poverty. Editors became paper recycling entrepreneurs. Journalists were persecuted. America was great again.

You see. There was once a great war. A war of intellect. Historians and linguists fought. Politicians promptly joined in. Lawyers wept. Common citizens began to blame the government. The syllabi of high school graduates in English was too heavy and complicated for an average mind. An intelligent man naturally came up with the idea to simplify the English language. His quest led him to a reasonable conclusion: it was time to kill the Comma. The Common Comma complicates. It redefines. It reiterates.

Prepositions would no longer begin sentences. People would no longer forget the comma before a quote. The end of a quote would be the actual end of it. MBA graduates would pride upon their lack of punctuation in their PowerPoint presentations. Grammar exercises in schools and colleges would be cut in half. Ink would be saved on a mass scale. Long sentences with innumerable commas would be history.

Every war has its origin in simple altercations or the lack thereof. Familial feuds escalate to atrocities. Mistakes become disasters. This war was based on the cousin of the Comma: the Oxford Comma. People had been laughing at its respectable education. This further proved that education was becoming more of an illusion. No one knew what to do with education. Or the Oxford Comma.

Historians had a view that the earliest origins of the comma were in singular dots to separate things. Full stops. Then came the sweet slashes. Until a lazy Aldus Manutius shortened it to a mini slash with a circle at its top and curves for decorative purposes.

Lawyers found an argument in this: let it be known that the full stop simplifies. Scholars helpfully added that It increases word count. Poets heaved sighs of relief. Fewer punctuation worries. A substitute candidate was already in the picture. The war had a prospective victor.

But you know that the dust of bureaucracy is hard to wipe off. Old ways of thinking die hard. Governments pass orders. They make mistakes. They learn. Then they get voted out of power.

The subsequent decree issued by the Queen of the United Kingdom to its citizens read as follows:
"This is to bring to the attention of whoever it may concern that the series of lengthy discussions and deliberations among various experts has subsequently concluded into a mutual agreement in relation to the use of commas which is to avoid its use forthwith in order that an average person is benefitted from better communication and understanding. It is expected that the full stop will suffice the function of a comma for separation for all intents and purposes where such avoidance is reasonably close to impossible. Any violation would be punishable to death. We have just bettered the world! This is the first substantial change to the English language since the word selfie. A celebration of this remarkable achievement will be in the form of an exceptionally grand feast at the Times Square this Sunday. All are invited. Let us eat people."

And that is how England solved its problem of population control and passed the most landmark immigration reform in the history of the world: by eating people.

The typo

Written by Yash Raj Talan

[note to self: grammar isn't funny enough to turn into an entire story, sometimes]