You should be like this. He must do that. We all have to. Because that’s what’s expected. Because I said so.
Yuck. Thanks to Gail Shepherd from Heald Green, Cheshire, whose letter to the Times last week reminded me of exactly what bothers me about the use of such limiting words (my emphases):
“Sir, I was pleased to observe that Barack Obama is left-handed like me. I was, however, appalled at the manner in which he held his pen as he signed his first proclamation. It looked ridiculous and ruined (for me) what should have been a momentous ceremony.
This problem was dealt with promptly at my primary school with both left- and right-handed pupils being taught to hold a pen correctly – an art one would have expected the president of the United States to have mastered by now.”
Hmmmm. Well, in my opinion, holding a pen “correctly” is probably less important than actually being able to use one, Gail. And, indeed, perhaps a little less pressing than actually being able to write anything of substance.
Other than your shared manual orientation, sadly I think there’s very little else you have in common with Obama. Whilst you’re indulging your pedantry by writing letters about pen-holding etiquette to the Times, indulged by an editor who has clearly lost grip on reality (or indeed lost his way to the Daily Telegraph offices), someone who holds his pen perhaps a little clumsily is actually the president of the United States. So it can’t really matter that much, can it?
