One man’s grammatical nicety is another man’s grotesque solecism, I thought, as I perused a report in the Gulf News, where gold prices and prayer times jostle at the masthead. It concerned standards of grammar at schools in Manama, the capital of Bahrain.
‘Our students should be trained on getting the message across,’ said a mathematics teacher. ‘Some sacrifices might have to be done, such as doing away with capital letters, but that should not be a major point of contention.’
Well, I don’t know. We have grown used to capital letters in our writing system, inconsistent as their use may be. We may find it strange that the ancient Romans did not make a regular distinction between the capital and small forms of letters, but, as with the use of spaces between words, we find it helpful.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in