SLASHING & DASHING- TRADITION & HERITAGE

"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Matthew 5:18)

Professing followers of Jesus Christ have often heard that verse read, but probably most have not idea what a "jot" or "tittle" is. These were small punctuation marks used in Hebrew writing. When Jesus said that, it was kind of like us saying, "I want every t crossed and every i dotted!".

This may more some of you silly, and many will wonder WHY I would possibly address something as seemingly small and insignificant as a jot or tittle ... or dash or apostrophe ... on my blog.

I'm just been noticing something and I wonder if it's just me who is noticing this: In our very high tech cyber and digital age, outside of the technical jargon of a URL address setup, apostrophes, slashes,and other marks are starting to be DROPPED. This is even true of formal surnames and company names.

In the U.S., for decades, the official abbreviation for the Assemblies of God was:

A/G. (A forward slash G).

(In Australia and the U.K. it's usually abbreviated A.O.G.).

Americans in the Assemblies of God refer to the religious organization as the "A/G".
We were always taught that was the proper abbreviation. In all official correspondence and publicity of the Assemblies of God that was ALWAYS used. And, when Assemblies of God ministers wrote about the Assemblies of God they always abbreviated it as A/G. About ten years ago, I noticed in all official correspondence from the Springfield, Missouri headquarters, the abbreviation began to be published as:

AG. (A capital A immediately followed by a capital G and no slash in the middle.)

I have noticed that most Assemblies of God ministers and constituents over the age of fifty still use A/G. We were taught that abbreviation and we used it for decades, but it's changed.

I really think the reason for that is digital usage on line. The forward slash takes up extra room and can be confusing. In fact, when our old church was still around we had an e-mail address and it was:

agframingham@aol.com

And we had a website which is now defunct at"

www.agframingham.org

I deliberately did NOT use a slash in the abbreviation AG to avoid confusion.

Something that has REALLY SURPRISED me, though, it that PEOPLE ARE CHANGING HE WAY THEY SPELL THEIR LAST NAMES! I'm talking about names like O'Brien and O'Connell and
D'Ambra. In working at a telephone answering service and in taking messages which contain people's last names, I've been surprised that maybe half of people with these type last names now DROP the apostrophe in spelling them. That's also GOT TO be easier in creating e-mail addresses using those names or even websites using those names. I wonder if in another generation, those names will have gone through an evolution which will entirely eliminate the apostrophes. AND, for that matter, there are the names like MacDonald which have capital and small letters, and I'm finding those are now much more commonly appearing as all in the same "case" rather than some upper case letters and some lower case letters.

I wonder if I am the only one who notices this kind of "stuff". AND, if you have one of the type of last names I cite here, I'd be very interested in your comments.