A Journalist's Email

How's that for a thoughtful, reflective title? (See thoughtful, reflective sidebar to your left.)

I knew this day would come as a writer. It had to. One cannot write both journalism and fiction without realising it. Those who take English at the same time often struggle with it more. Depending on your point of view, it can be either a hurdle recently crossed or a terrible, terrible set-back in one's development. Or both.

I've just come to the realisation that I'm writing emails in CP Style.

It just happens instinctively, and I think it's been going on for awhile now without my really noticing. I dearly hope I haven't done anyone any lasting damage--there's no way anyone should be exposed to more CP Style than they already are in a day. It's a plague.

It hit me when I wrote out 4th--a word that would have taken three keystrokes and have been perfectly legitimate, especially given the context--and hesitated, backspaced, and wrote out "fourth" instead. In fact, the very fact that I paused and reflected on the issue and its context shows that I am truly very, very sick indeed.

I shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn't caught this today. I might have gone on into far worse delusions: speaking in radio-speke, making poignant looks just slightly down over my left wrist, creating increasingly awkward segues in a never-ending attempt to find truth in my increasingly fractured and confusing world.

The memories of other, instinctive uses of CP Style in emails come washing over me. I can't have done that. I can't have worried about whether to put periods between the "n" and the "s" in N.S.

But I have. I have because I am one of those people who wakes up in the middle of the night feeling guilty about the last time we looked something up in the not-so-small snazzy, modern-design-cover blue CP Style book.