I wrote this under the alias of Abner Cromby. <amused guffaw> It was part of a point/counterpoint sort of thing. Unfortunately the other article, in defense of the 'Medill. period' was not nearly as funny.Medill. A copy editor's nightmare, "Medill." -- notice the period -- is to be a sentence in itself, a complete phrase in one easy to digest utterance. Admittedly, the space for detailed discourse on a sweatshirt is limited, but there is room for improvement.
The question is posed, is Medill the last word? It's not the last word in the Syllabus's index; an entire half of the alphabet follows it. It can be the last word in a sentence, such as this one ending with the word Medill. It’s no sentence in and unto itself, is it? Thinking about it, Me dill is improper grammar for a pickle to use and Med ill has no verb.
In light of these revelations, perhaps the time has come for a change. Other punctuation marks deserve equal consideration. For example Medill? may seem fresh or cute, but probably is too questioning to be adequate, instead conveying an air of insecurity or uncertainty.
Speaking of adequate, it would seem that Medill; conveys the complete and independent (in the manner of a clause at least) idea of Medill(.) without the entirely too potentially presumptuous period. An exclamatory Medill! or perhaps better, Medill!! loudly and energetically conveys basically the same idea as the older, more conventional -- and stodgy in comparison -- Medill.
Completely out of question are the slash, the dash and the colon. Medill/ to a math major may signify Medill divided by nothing, thus infinity, but to the layman it looks funny. Also in the looking funny department is the forward slash, Medill\. The dash and the colon after Medill leave the reader with a sense of something missing, an idea ideally not put forth by this institution -- Medill- Medill: . The same effect can be had with the comma or the ampersand, as in Medill, and Medill&.
However, use of ellipsis could triple the appeal of the single period and gives the shirt a wistful edge: Medill... provides the intelligent sense of musing that Medill(.) lacks, and grammatically gives the sense that, when taking out everything unnecessary, one is left with just Medill.
Plenty of other demarcation options exist including quotation marks. 'Medill' or "Medill" lend themselves well to the sort of people who hold up fingers to denote a quote, but few others. Few people also would lobby for ~Medill or Medill@, which can only allude to a computer related field -- members of which undoubtedly are now wondering "Medill dot what?" anyway.
A tip of the hat to our new, higher tuition would be Medill$, and while we dwell in the top row of the keyboard, most journalism students, come finals time, understand the cartoon-ish utterance Medill#&*@!! Now that seems appropriate.
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