Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Fancy ClANCY

Friend, journalist and fellow blogger Paul of Englishman in New York is always trying to impress me because I am his hero in the world of blogging. His previous attempt to enter my lowercase L domain fell flat, but his latest contribution, almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, is quite nice. After his interview with top selling author Tom Clancy, Paul explains:
Hey William

If you ever decide to peer into the mind of a Lowercase L perp, I am afraid you may be sorely disappointed. Look what I just did.

I have no idea how it happened. I don't remember ever writing a Lowercase L before in my life. Maybe I have been reading your site too often? Maybe it's contagious?

All I know is that I wrote the uppercase "C" followed by the lowercase "L" with the full intention of continuing in lowercase letters. And yet for some reason my hand insisted on the uppercase.

It threw me so much that I even misspelled "EXPENSES" in the second word.

At some point in the future I am going to find this envelope and wonder who or what CIANCY EXPENCES are. How embarrassing.

Paul

Inspired by lowercase L, Paul also has a new photo blog — Look for Signs of Life!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Paul has the answer. He says he fully intended to keep writing lower-case. I contend that some sub-system in the brain interpreted the lower case "l" as an uppercase "I" and shifted him into Upper Case mode.

What do you think?

Anonymous said...

It is not clear from my comment that I mean lower case "l" as an uppercase "i"

Just to clarify there.

William Levin said...

Simon, your theory could be correct. And sometimes it even works in the opposite direction, with examples that don't quite fit the criteria for this site: an author will write all uppercase, until they get to the L, which they write lowercase for some reason, and then all the following letters turn lowercase, too. The L seems to be a literary fork in the sentence road!

Gez said...

I love the picture, he's so disappointed with himself!