And the Winner Is...—A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief SpecGram Vol CLXXII, No 1 Contents Linguistics Nerd Camp—Bethany Carlson

Letters to the Editor

Greetings and Felicitationalizations, Editorializationizingesque Personages!

Long time fan, first time letterer.

I notedand both my phone and I supportyour recent and ongoing conversion to a more responsive web design. I am also a supporter of more efficient communication, and I have always been intrigued by Huffmenglish, which seems both logical and practical.

I sense a deep-rooted conflict of philosophy, however, between these two worthy aims. Yjs, as Huffmenglish is rightly encoded, is devoid of spaces in its most efficient and Platonically optimal form. Does that not conflict with the goal of supporting small, narrow devices?

Z­wa­to­kn­wh­ao­ti.­Is­Yjs­te­ri­tmvm­tcfm­to­go­fo?

With Respectifyingfulness,
Niles Edmund Rupert Davenport-Illington, Esq., RN

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Dear The-Nerdier-The-Better,

While it is our duty and privilege to bring important developments like Huffmenglish to the attention of our readers, both the bringing and the reading are not without danger. Huffmenglish, in particular, has led to a number of cases of mild Framework Psychosis. Given your obvious case of moderate morpheme addiction, our medicolegal team advises that we should not engage you on this matter, and that to do so would be to act most ultra­dis­re­spon­si­ble­ish­ment­al­ly.

—Eds.

P.S.: Perhaps this completely unrelated typesetter’s nursery rhyme will soothe you:

soft hyphen, ­ hyphen,
a little break prefer,
happy hyphen, sneaky hyphen,
<wbr>, <wbr>, <wbr>.

Dear Editors,

Regarding the prestigious Jurisprudential Linguistics category of your Dark and Stormy Noun contest for 1985: inasmuch as you have somehow seen fit to award “1st Place” to someone else and not to me, the author of the “Dr Flarman” entry which was maliciously and with clearly evil intent awarded a mere “2nd Place”; and inasmuch as the “Judge Otto Segman” libelously referred to in the incompetently-awarded “1st Place” is in fact none other than myself, you are hereby notified that my lawyers have filed a lawsuit in nine (9) legal jurisdictions, asserting my moral rights to the “1st Place” award and all concomitant, entailed, and/or implied benefits associated thereunto; and furthermore that you will be hearing from my cousin Guido real fast.

Signed, Dr. Brogan Florian, PhD
Negligently Unacknowledged Entrant

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Dr Bro-Flo!

Due to your judicious use of colons, both full and semi-, your letter is eligible to enter the next competitionwhich we are currently planning for some time after 2027though you are unlikely to win because your entry lacks pathos, plot, and proper punctuationparticularly em dashes!

Eds.

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Speculative Grammarian accepts well-written letters commenting on specific articles that appear in this journal or discussing the field of linguistics in general. We also accept poorly-written letters that ramble pointlessly. We reserve the right to ridicule the poorly-written ones and publish the well-written ones... or vice versa, at our discretion.


And the Winner Is...A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief
Linguistics Nerd CampBethany Carlson
SpecGram Vol CLXXII, No 1 Contents