 We still have some superheroes with powers that relate to strength
and speed or other physical attributes, but I always wondered where
the heroes were who overthrow their opponents with brains instead of
brawn: heroes who could be role models for the math whiz or the
English geek.I am an English geek. Who are my heroes?
Today I am introducing the Meta Four: superheroes for the
progressive wordsmith.
First, we have the Incredible Simile, who can take the likeness
(or "as-ness") of any form, like a shape-shifter. Oh, there he is
now! His sidekick is Miss Personification, who makes inanimate
objects sit up and take notice.
Then we have The Period, who sounds like she could really kick
butt on certain days of the month. In reality, though, the only
thing she can do is stop the nefarious Run-On Sentence. Run-On
Sentence has been known to destroy entire paragraphs by reciting
endless monologues. I don't know what we'd do without The Period to
fight for us.
Captain Coordinating Conjunction can join two unrelated thoughts!
Amazing! At my best, I struggle to put two related thoughts
together. Since we are all friends, I can tell you that his alter
ego is Andor Butt. With a name like that, it's easy to see why he
chose to fight bad guys. He and Run-On Sentence grew up together and
were best friends until Coordinating Conjunction met The Period.
With his Subordinate Conjunction, who can turn into a preposition
at the drop of a capital letter, the Captain battles for truth,
justice and the Andor Buttian way.
The fourth member of the Meta Four is Professor X-clamation. He
doesn't have true superpowers, per se, but he uses his powerful
voice to interject at precisely the right moments.
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 You'll notice that he interjected twice while I was yammering
about Captain Coordinating Conjuction. Many people don't know that
Professor X-clamation is the mastermind behind Batman's "Biff! Pow!"
strategy in the old series.
Together, our superheroes and their sidekicks will rid the world
of grammatical errors. Of course, so much evil abounds in Sentence
City that there will always be miscreants making trouble for the
humble residents.
For example, Double Negative. Twice as powerful as the Single
Negative, he doesn't have the ability to not confuse our heroes with
his mind-numbing whining. Single Negative is his twin brother and,
incidentally, is one of the good guys.
The wicked Misspeller is a bumbling sorceress who causes havoc in
Sentence City by changing street signs that lead people to the
Porkway instead of the Parkway. She is easily defeated by a
spell-checker, but sometimes her methods are diabolically sneaky and
need to be quashed by our Meta Four.
And, of course, Dangling Participle used to wander in dark
alleys, but he's now doing hard time for indecent exposure.
Although, we, as citizens of Sentence City, have word processors
and spell-checkers to fight against the day-to-day obstruction of
grammatical clarity, in the fight for proper English, we have no
better friends than the Meta Four.
[By LAURA SNYDER]
Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist,
author and speaker. You can reach her at
lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
or visit www.lauraonlife.com
for more info.
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