As I was driving to work this morning I saw the following written on the side of a white panel van:
‘Kol Noun Surveyor’
As a writer I was naturally intrigued. Kol Nouns, I’d never heard of them.
Were they part of a sub-set of an existing noun group such as pronouns, verbal nouns, abstract nouns or collective nouns? Or were they a group on their own?
Of course, it’s not surprising these nouns were new to me. Looking again at the sign I could only assume since they had their own specialised surveyors, seeking and scrutinising them, they must be pretty rare.
Sigh – oh, for a single piece of punctuation. A comma, colon, or even a dash would have done much in the interest of clarity.
‘Kol Noun: Surveyor’
Suddenly, I have a man and his job not a linguistics problem.
Of course this particular problem was generated because this surveyor’s surname was in fact a noun.
It might be apt to end with an image:
And talking about saving lives....
