Things I Wish Everyone Would Do

1. Correctly use a possessive apostrophe. It doesn't matter how the word is spelled; it only matters if it is singular or plural. A man named Mr. Davis owns Davis's book. He and his wife are the Davises. The house they own together is the Davises' house. All three words are pronounced "Davis-ez."

   Here's what it means when you write Davis'. It means there is a thing called a Davi, and that more than one of them (Davis) own something. If that is not your intended meaning, do not write Davis'.

2. End meetings on time. There is a saying: "punctuality is the courtesy of princes." (For more on this saying, see David Friedman's blog post here.) Starting a meeting late does not bother me that much; sure, it's disrespectful, but I can be doing something else while I wait, and as long as the meeting ends on time, it's the meeting organizer who is losing more than I am. But running meetings long makes me furious.

   Allowing a meeting to go long says that the organizer is certain anything he wants to say is more important than anything else you could possibly be doing. It shows a complete disrespect for the needs of everyone else in the room. And it shows the organizer's lack of self-control.

   Why is this such a huge problem in the Mormon church? I went to a BYU devotional where the university president went 15 minutes over, making everyone late for their next classes. The lesson I learned was "never again attend devotional." I had a mission companion who viewed weekly planning as an open-ended time commitment. I have been to correlation meetings, presidency meetings, and ward councils that are set to run until the organizer gets tired.

   Our stake conferences routinely surprise with their running length (75 minutes? 90 minutes? Why do you need to know beforehand?) You're treated as one of suspect loyalties if you demand to know the length of the meeting. "Why, are you going to stay home if it's too long?" No, but I have other things in my life to schedule. Will I be home at 8, 9, or never? Every church meeting should have not only a starting time, but a well-publicized ending time.

   Having an ending time is a start, but it's not enough. I recently attended a church meeting that was advertised as ending in an hour. At the end of an hour, we were exactly halfway through the program. The meeting needs to end on time, with no exceptions. Think you have something to say that is worth keeping us late? Think again. When was the last time General Conference ran long? It doesn't happen. If President Monson doesn't have anything worth extra time, I seriously doubt you do.

3. Use dollar coins and two-dollar bills, and stop using pennies, nickels, and dollar bills. I've written before about the stupidity of pennies and nickels. I'm not certain public action can cause their retirement from circulation. Dollar coins, dollar bills, and two-dollar bills, though, can be influenced by public behavior.

4. Use the letters Đ and Þ. I'm not completely opposed to digraphs (I'm not calling for the end of "br," "ch," "sl," or any of the others), but it makes no sense to have a single digraph that represents two different sounds, like "th" does. The voiced "th," as in "this," and the unvoiced "th," as in "thing," are different noises, and so should not be written the same. This is especially problematic when the voicing/unvoicing creates a different word. My Uncle Theodore's nickname of "Thee" is not the word "the" or "thee." A return of Eth and Thorn would solve the problem. Since language is totally informal, this is one that public action can cause. Maybe I will begin using Đ and Þ on my blog.