On the one-year anniversary of the Punctuation And Capitalization Tax, commonly called the PAC, reviews have been mixed as to its impact on America.
Gwen Prosody, a retired English professor, has been an outspoken critic of the PAC tax. Ms. Prosody said, “This is a regressive tax, like those on tobacco, alcohol and lottery tickets. It penalizes the poorest in our country. Do we want to be a country where only the wealthy can afford proper English?”
The Professor continued: “The effect is seen most startlingly with the young. Notoriously cash-strapped teens have embraced the change. An examination of their texting habits shows they have all but abandoned punctuation and capital letters, formerly essential elements of writing. They have, in effect, created a sub-language they call PAC-Man.”
“Once a vital means of communication, language has become yet another barrier separating the young from the old; the rich from the poor.”
When asked for her reaction to the decision of the University of California, Berkeley to add PAC-Man to their core English curriculum, Professor Prosody responded with a sound best described as a snort.
Congressman Ed Snollygoster, author of the PAC tax legislation, defended his signature project. “When this investment in our future was passed into law, doomsayers predicted it would mark the end of civilization as we know it. After one year we see that the PAC’s effects have been overwhelmingly positive. I don’t count the actions of a fringe group of youngsters, who are always looking for ways to tweak the establishment’s nose.” the congressman added with a laugh.
Snollygoster continued: “While budget estimates may have been a bit optimistic, the PAC has still brought much needed revenue into the nation’s coffers. After all, if we want America to continue to lead the world with such endeavors as the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the money must come from somewhere.”
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch today issued the following press release:
“News Corporation publications will adopt the PAC-Man styling for all of our written media, effective immediately this includes online content newspapers and magazines is this an attempt to avoid paying taxes definitely murdoch said not we look upon this as an opportunity to enhance the English language confusion should be short-lived as we adapt to the new style we hope young adults will assist their elders death and taxes are not the only certainties in life he continued so is change
in a related announcement congressman snollygoster today proposed an amendment to the tax code which would add a tax on spaces tothepactheamendedtaxwouldbecalledthespac
Peg-o-Leg's Ramblings 
Today I learned the word ‘Snollygoster’ and I shall forever be grateful to you for it. What a fantastic word.
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And it applies to so many politicians, does it not?
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funny that is not only the way my teenage daughter writes and texts but its how she talks too onesentencebecomesoneverylongword
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So you’ve got somebody in-house to translate for you, right?
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NO! Somebody help me! LOL
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There’s still time for you to mend your ways and avoid the tax!
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Will the segment of the population striving to punctuate and capitalize correctly be receiving a portion of this tax revenue?
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Of course! Indirectly. Through the vast benefits to society of subsidizing life for those who abandoned high school English in favor of sleeping in, having/siring babies and not working.
(I was over commenting on your word-themed blog post while you were here commenting on mine. In November, a young blogger’s fancy turns to thoughts of English.)
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ifor one will nottry to beat this newspace tax outright, butwill sneakily buryit in wellplaced writeoffs whichmy accountant willproperlyhide in thisyears return. Inthisway I am surenot to drawany attention tomy self ormy bogusreturn.
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Maybe I should mention that PAC tax evasion will get you 2 years of hard time grading 4th graders’ “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essays.
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Crap. I just now figured out what LOL and OMG mean. I’m more sure today than I have ever been, silence might be the best policy!
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There’s nothing wrong with a well-placed “lol” or “omg”, but better make them lower case to avoid owing Uncle Sam.
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goshhowimisspunctuationmarksandthespacebariusedtohaveonmykeyboardsigh
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What’s amazing is how our brains kind of supply the spaces we need so we can make sense of a run-on of letters.
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u got 2b kdng me. i cn’t stand NEthing thats not AP stile. (I really had to think about that to type it. I’m going to be that old lady who’s telling total strangers to speak proper English in public places and local retail establishments.)
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I LOVE that old lady. Unless she turns her wrath on me. Gr8!
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: – D
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No joke: I just read Cowboy Poetry contest winning poetry. I found it so odd to read that right after I stepped out of the Cowboy Hall of Fame.
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What a coincidence! No offense to cowboy poetry meant, Charleen – just joking about the taxes. Yippee kai ai ay!
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Perfect timing — I wish all November ballot issues were presented like this! 🙂 Your post calls to mind another neat trick our brains can do. Apparently, all we need in order to read a word properly, is to see are the first and last letters of the word in the correct order, and then all the letters in the middle can be all mixed up, and we can still read a sentence just fine (allowing for normal spaces, of course). Check it out:
Here’s an example I found on the internet. It’s amazing!
“Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”
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Interesting. I only stumbled on the word “without”. I doubt if a dyslexic could read this though. I’ll have to copy it off and test it. Very interesting.
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Good point. I wonder if the dyslexic brain can handle this, or if that’s how words look to them anyway?
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That is fascinating! I breezed through it without a problem. The human mind is a real work of art and science, isn’t it?
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As always, your wit and humor are priceless. I’m older but not rich and I understand what you;re getting at here. Do you think it will be lost on young, poor readers. Oh, silly me, they’re too busy texting and Tweeting to read this lengthy post! 😉
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I don’t have any young and poor readers. I only appeal to the older, wealthy reader on purpose. Soon I’ll start marketing mink coats and time-shares to my readers.
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Brilliant. Texting is the root of all evil (in my eyes anyway). Maybe it’s because my thumbs just don’t work as well as an 18 year old’s? You know, I try to punctuate properly, I really do. It’s hard, but I press on and still make mistakes. But it’s the effort that counts, right?
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I’m with you. I may never get the proper use of semi-colons to stick in my brain, but I’ll keep on trying. And texting – can’t do it without intense effort. I’d rather pick up the phone and call.
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I believe it was one of the greatest English speakers of all time, Winston Churchill, who said of texting: “Never in the history of mankind have so many, said so much, so incorrectly, so often.”
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Mr. Churchill was a real visionary to foresee the age of texting. What did he have to say about sexting?
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Professor Prosody = Clever!!
Personally, I don’t think you should be able to break the rules until you learn them first. If you chose to type lazy on your own time, that’s one thing, but if you are writing for the masses, then a little care should be taken.
inmyhumbleopinion
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I hoped someone would know that word.
You hit it right on the head – you have to know the rules before you can CHOOSE to bend them.
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Commas…they save lives….
Let’s eat Grandpa
or
Let’s eat, Grandpa
Now, Excuse me while I go look up psrody.
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So true! I think I saw that on a t-shirt once.
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Snollygoster, did I vote for him? My writing group leader makes me write properly. Guess I’ll be paying those taxes.
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Even if you didn’t vote for him, that’s probably who you ended up with.
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