Oops!

“What on Earth have you done, Jeff‽”

“What’s up? I’m just following your instructions. Nice use of the interrobang, by the way.”

“Thanks. It’s probably the most underused punctuation mark in the history of underused punctuation marks, knocks the semicolon into a cocked hat. Unlike the apostrophe which suffers from an unbelievable amount of misuse.”

“I’m with you there, Mate. Admittedly, there are issues with its and it’s. Generally, people who don’t know how to use it properly tend to chuck it in almost every time a word is suffixed with an S instead of just when the word is in the possessive form…”

“With a few exceptions and special cases…”

“Exactly, but its as a possessive doesn’t take an apostrophe, which kind of means it’s the exception.”

“The one that proves the rule.”

“If you say so, but I think it confuses people.”

“Possibly. But did you know the interrobang was invented by a New York ad man called Martin Speckter, who didn’t like the usual combination of an exclamation mark followed by a question mark?”

“So he made up this thing‽ Never really caught on, though, did it?”

“Not really, except by people who want you to know that they know about interrobangs.”

“People like you, do you mean?”

“I suppose, Jeff. People like me. Anyway, what have you done with my garage?”

“What you asked me to do. Was I only supposed to blow the bloody doors off?”

“Hah bloody hah! I asked you to give me a price to treat the roof timbers for woodworm, re-slate the roof and replace the doors!”

“Which I gave you.”

“So… What happened?”

“And then your exact words were, Look, we’re mates. Can you just knock it down a bit for me?”

“I meant can you knock the price down, not the bloody building!”

“Oops.”

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This was written in response to Kreative Kue 337 published on this site.