Fantasy Apostrophe

On graphic conventions in English fantasy writing

Alright, time to break some rules.

For this next series of posts, I’m going to discuss the design of scripts for fantasy languages. And to do that, I’m going to consider the history of the graphical representation of fantasy-words. As you remember, a language is a logical-mathematical system for combining linguistic lego pieces, as well as a socially-bound, semi-arbitrary communication system for contact among homolingual speakers. Being a natural outflowering of language, writing is not exempt from being considered under these two heads.  So the questions guiding us shall be (as usual):

What does the script mean, and in what way?
Who uses it and why?

We are not just yet going to dive into syllabaries (writing systems where only syllables are represented) vs. alphabets (writing systems where individual sounds are represented) vs. abjads (writing systems without vowels) vs. logographies (writing systems where each word is a unique character). Before we can begin to flourish artistic upon papyrus, we should take a look at the graphical conventions of our own language. Specifically here I am interested in one contentious little piece of punctuation: the apostrophe.

Elegant little floating tadpoles

Fantasy-writers love a good apostrophe. Those elegant little floating tadpoles are so prolific in english-language sci-fi and fantasy that they’ve become almost symbolic of the genres. Generous apostrophizing goes back a ways, too. It’s fair to call it a solid historical fixture of the style. I quote several respectably old examples here  directly from Mignon Fogarty’s 2013 Rectormag blog post:

1. 1955—J’onn J’onzz (Martian Manhunter), character introduced in Detective Comics #225

2. 1965—Muad’Dib, creature and constellation in Frank Herbert’s Dune

3. 1967—T’Pau and T’Pring, characters in Star Trek episode “Amok Time” by Theodore Sturgeon

4. 1968—F’lar, character in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight (published in short story form in October and December 1967)

5. 1969—Pei’ans, an alien race in Roger Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead

6. 1969—D’donori, place in Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness
   
   (https://reactormag.com/apostrophes-in-science-fiction-and-fantasy-names/#:~:text=1968%E2%80%94F'lar%2C%20character,Creatures%20of%20Light%20and%20Darkness)

Apostrophes, it seems, have long ago surpassed the original rules laid out for them, which I hasten to add is a good thing. I despise worship of rules, as the death of imagination and the shackling of creativity.  But, as the saying goes, one must learn the rules before one can break them. So let’s see...

The apostrophe in English indicates a sound omitted in the pronunciation of a word, (viz., not-->n’t; is--> ‘s; are-->’re; will-->’ll; would-->’d; had-->’d, etc.) at least such is the conventional account.   Anne McAfferty’s dragonriders in her celebrated Pern series use an abbreviating apostrophe in this way (e.g. M’hall, F’lar, L’tol) as part of an honorific name-shortening that indicates their full status as dragonrider. The dragons’ speech consistently abbreviates human words. Thus in an effort to grow closer to their mounts, riders take the draconic pronunciation of their proper names as a new name. The use of an apostrophe here is further justified in-world, since Pern’s dragon riders are distantly descended from earth colonists, who could plausibly have retained some early punctuation. 

But let’s go back to English for a bit and take a closer look at the kinds of words that get apostrophized. We notice that they all seem to belong to what might be called function words. Words like not, should, have, had, is, will, am. Not content words.

Now there are a’ course’ e’ceptions to this gen’ral observation. Apostrophes are also used in writin’ slang. In Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens, for example, representing the speech of his cockney character, Sam Weller, makes liberal use of the slang apostrophe. Weller, talking about his career aspirations states:

I wos a carrier’s boy at startin’; then a vaginer’s, then a helper, then a boots. Now I’m a gen’l’m’n’s servant. I shall be a gen’l’m’n myself one of these days, perhaps, with a pipe in my mouth, and a summer-house in the back-garden. Who knows? I shouldn’t be surprised for one.

And goodness gracious, what a mess of apostrophized strange slang abbreviations. I must confess to never having liked writing -ing in rapid speech as -in’, because what’s happening is a sound change, not the removal of a g-sound. Of course, the removal of the g-glyph causes the ng-glyph combo to change value. This is a feature of the spelling purely, and not a faithful representation of spoken language. But it does suggest another, hidden, use for the apostrophe--namely, to mark off words as “strange,” as “exceptions.” Exceptions to what, you might ask? Well, to standard, proper, acceptable English of course--which is hilarious, because English is already a monstrous grabbag of exceptions and inconsistencies. The whole darn language is a “strange exception.”

George R.R. Martin, however, exploits this ability of the apostrophe to communicate “strangeness” in naming the God of the Asshai religion R’hllor, a strangeness which Stannis complains about, in A Song of Ice and Fire, saying, “the very name sounds queer on Westerosi tongues.” When Arya “westeros-izes” the name of the god, her pronunciation is notably rendered as “Rulore,” without apostrophes. This is good world-building. The apostrophe indicates strangeness from the perspective of a Westerosi, not from that of an English speaker.  We might contrast this with the eldritch names of H.P. Lovecraft, C’thulhu and R’yleh, which are names for things beyond human comprehension. So, I guess the apostrophe there indicates a kind of “cosmic strangeness?” It seems more ornamental than substantial in Lovecraft, I must say. 

Let’s return to function words. That is a general term for words that you can’t find a referential meaning for. They don’t look for things and events in the world. Unlike words like,  cat, Ishmael, skitter, delicious which name an indefinite entity, a definite individual, an activity, and a quality; words like is, which, it, for, the, at can be said to perform a function rather than have a meaning. The apostrophe seems to favor an appearance for function words. And not only that--the abbreviated constructions strongly favor combination with other function words, just from sheer bulk of examples. For instance:

• Shouldn’t/wouldn’t/couldn’t

• Can’t

• Mustn’t

• Won’t

• Ain’t

• They’re

• We’re

• He’s

• She’d

(Of course, they can also combine with regular nouns, e.g. The cat’s in the barn)

There are even abbreviated combinations that aren’t written with an apostrophe: 

• Lemme (from let me)

• Gonna (from going to)

• Woulda/shoulda/coulda (from should/would/could have)

• Hafta (from have to)

You’ll notice that in spoken language these so-called contractions don’t behave like 2-word combos at all. They give all the indications of being just a regular single word. Lemme give you an example to show you what I mean. 

In speaking a sentence without contractions I could say:

He would have made the jump if he had not tripped.

If I wanted to express a more definite opinion about the events of the above sentence, I could modify the sentence with adverbs like so:

He would happily have made the jump if he had, sadly, not tripped. 

I can stick the adverbs directly between the function words. Between the would and the have between the had and the not. But what if I had used contractions, and kept the adverb placement the same?

???He would happily’ve made the jump if he had sadlyn’t tripped.

This first phrase kinda makes sense, but the second phrase is absolutely horrible,--just unattested gibberish. The sentence becomes much more grammatical-sounding when you put the adverbs after the entire contraction.

He would’ve happily made the jump if he hadn’t, sadly, tripped.

Why does this sentence sound so much better than the one before it? It’s because the sentence before was trying to split up full words. You can place an adverb between two individual words, but you can’t place an adverb right in the middle of a single word. This seems to suggest that the contracted constructions have over time become full-on single words. So, the question remains--”if it’s not a word, then what is the contracted element?” The answer: it is a morpheme, a subpart of a full word that can’t appear on its own in a phrase. Other examples of morphemes in english would be the plural -s ending; the gerundive -ing ending; the re- prefix that indicates repetition; and many, many others. All of these combine with root-words (words that can appear alone in a phrase) to modify their meanings in predictable ways. 

Which suggests yet another hidden use for the apostrophe: it indicates a root-word that has been morphologically modified.

So, comparing standard use, to actual use, to specialized usage in fantasy writing, we arrive at at least three different functions for apostrophes

1. To indicate missing sounds/letters from a word

2. To indicate some kind of morphological change

3. To indicate the “strangeness” of a particular word

But I am not yet satisfied. I feel that there is still one more step that can be taken. The most obvious aspect of writing has been right under our noses this whole time. Writing is a visual art.

(Before proceeding, I mentioned earlier that you can’t put an adverb in the middle of a single word. I would hate myself forever if I didn’t mention one exception to this in English. It is the hilariously vulgarly named “fucking”-insertion. The basic idea is that in certain emphatic expressions, e.g. Fantastic! or Ridiculous! An interjection may be inserted before the stressed syllable, yielding expressions such as Fan-fucking-tastic! and Ri-goddamn-diculous)

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That’s right: writing may have started off as a one-to-one map of speech-sounds, but it certainly isn’t anymore. It has a considerable visual-aesthetic component, which means that you can’t only use linguistic criteria to evaluate it.  We must ask, what does the apostrophe do visually? 

Well, from a basic intuitive perspective, it’s a disjunction. It’s a break in an even word. It’s not a letter, so its appearance in the midst of letters signifies an exception, as it were ,to the regular flow of sound represented by an uninterrupted graphical string. Take a look at the names listed at the beginning of this post and you’ll see what I mean.

1. J’onn J’onzz
   Does this read more more intuitively as [Jahn Jahnz] or [Juh-AHN Juh-Anhzz]?

2. Muad’Dib
   Does this read more intuitively as [MuaDIB] or as [Muad-DIB]?

3. T’Pau and T’Pring
   Do you hear [Tpow and tpring] or [Tuh-POW and Tuh-PRING]?

4. Pei’ans
   Is [payanz] or [Pay-EE-uh-anz] better? 

5. D’donori
   Which is liklier, [dun-OR-ee] or [duh-dun-OR-ee]? 

You see how the apostrophe inclines you towards a certain pronunciation? You see how radically different that is from the standard view of apostrophes? That they’re just there to show where a letter is missing? Changing a sound is the exact opposite of taking a sound away. Far from being useless, these “fantasy apostrophes” seem to carry actual phonetic value. 

I hope, from these examples, that you will see that even a simple piece of punctuation has been exploited in the fantasy and sci-fi genres in order to enhance story-enmeshment. Had the authors above stuck to bland, boring convention, their actual language-use would not have been strange enough to effectively communicate the otherness of their settings. An open mind, suspicious of convention, ever watchful for hidden patterns to exploit is the mark of an accomplished conlanger/worldbuilder. Don’t take any rules for granted. Slavish attention to real-world writing rules runs the risk of taking you out of the fantasy. Instead, like Prometheus, steal. Make rules for your own world.