Hung By an Apostrophe

Watching a re-run of the true crime TV show Forensic Files, I learned about a new field of the science called "forensic linguistics." It has a lot in common with many older branches of research such as the one of attribution which tries to determine who wrote a certain document, novel, or other text. Traditional attribution studies include researches into questions such as "Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays?" These studies often rely on concordances, comparative lists of the frequency with which words are used in different texts, of known and unknown authorship.

But I gather that "forensic linguistics" has been an attempt to pull together a broader range of verbal studies, of both written and audio material. While it can never be an exact science, it aims at presenting unbiased arguments that can stand the rigors of examination in court. It does not concern itself with handwriting analysis, but rather with the content of different writings and assertions. One of the pioneers in formalizing this branch of forensics has been John Olsson, whose books I was inspired to get after hearing about this new field on the TV show.

The Forensic Files episode that snagged my attention involved the question of the source of some threatening notes that a woman received in the mail before being murdered. Had these in fact been written by her husband, trying to make the authorities believe some outside person with a grudge against the woman murdered her? The notes were turned over to a forensic linguist for analysis, along with some representative samples of the husband's correspondence.

The forensic analyst soon noted a quirk that characterized both the husband's routine writing, and the poison pen letters. Both sets of writing were notable for including contractions of all negative assertions, such as "I can't, I shouldn't, I won't," etc. However all positive statements were written out as "I am, I would, I will." There was never an "I'll or "they'll" in either text. This was so unusual a stylistic dichotomy that the analyst concluded that the poison pen notes had in fact been written by the victim's husband. This analysis was combined with other forensic evidence pointing to the husband, and he was eventually convicted of his wife's murder.

The book of such case studies of crime I got by John Olsson weren't generally quite as decisive or thrilling as the above analysis. Still, he made some interesting points. His comments about how to detect plagiarism were especially telling. He noted that plagiarists will generally not be so obvious as to copy passages word-for-word. They will resort to synonyms that are necessarily a bit strained and inapt. So where their source might say "he poured chilled wine into glasses," - the plagiarist will translate that into "he poured fizzing wine into crystal goblets." Or the plagiarist might simply change the order of a sequence of actions, turning a catchy progression into a lame and disordered chronology. So "He came, he saw, he conquered," might be rephrased as "He conquered after having come and seen."

In another set of studies, Olsson reported on assignments he'd been given to determine whether the statements made by witnesses or suspects at a police station were spontaneous or whether they had in fact been coaxed out or suggested by the police themselves. It was frequently necessary to make this sort of determination in the days before police interviews were tape recorded.

In this connection, Olsson tells how he hung a lot of import on a witness' statement that "I saw the scar on his arm," when he'd been asked to describe the likely suspect in a murder case. There had been no previous recorded mention of a scar in the written police statement. If the witness' statement had been completely uncoached, Olsson believed he would have said "I saw a scar on his arm." The fact that he referred to "the" scar meant that some preceding reference to a scar had been made, but that such prior discussion had been omitted from the police detective's official written report. Such attention to minute detail ranks right up there with Sherlock Holmes' investigations.

All this opened up a fascinating new world of stylistic exploration for me. I would think any avid reader or writer would be drawn to the field of forensic linguistics for its insights into such nuance. But as I read along in the field, I realized I had once convicted of a mischief by some keen linguistic analysis informally exercised on me by a friend of mine.

It's a sad and wry story. Some years ago, I found a fragile white kitten on my property, not really injured, but obviously in need of a home. It made an affectionate, touching appeal to me to be adopted. But I just didn't feel I could take on the responsibilities of another pet at that time. I had an older dog that I thought wouldn't take kindly to the introduction of a rival into the household. Mostly though, I resisted the kitten's supplications out of sheer laziness. I was just too inert to consider tending a cat for the next twenty-plus years.

But what to do with it? It was springtime and all the no-kill shelters I called were awash in kittens. They all adamantly refused to accept yet one more likely unadoptable resident. I made pleas to every responsible person I could think of. But absolutely no one was in a position to adopt a cat.

Except - there was one person I knew who might make a home for this little stray. Glen's circumstances were far from ideal. He was an inveterate hoarder whose house was an unwholesome clutter. Any animal who came to live there would likely be subject to flea and mite infestation. But the man was tender-hearted and attentive to animals, in his way. And most important of all - he had an opening.

The last stray cat he had entertained had recently disappeared after several years of making Glen's house a regular way-station. Like many hoarders, Glen saw his seamy collection as being of inestimable value. He irrationally exaggerated the extent to which his hodgepodge of holdings would be coveted by the outside world. As it was with his cracked computer monitors, his stained and coverless books, and his broken and bladeless can opener - so it had been with the various scruffy alley cats he had given shelter to over the years. He was especially sure that this latest cat to disappear had been spirited away by some neighbor. He maintained that some neighbor must have been spying on him, a hankering after the cat growing and growing in the individual's breast - until he could no longer control his greed. Glen was sure the neighbor must have lured the cat permanently away with some ripe sardines or other irresistible treat. Glen had grown really attached to the cat and was desolate about the loss.

So Glen occurred to me as the little white kitten's best chance. But there was a problem. In addition to being paranoid about his belongings, Glen was also cussedly contrary. Whatever idea I presented to him - he would refute. Whatever course of action I advanced - he would strike down as unworkable and inadvisable in the extreme. When he'd forget that I had been the original source of some suggestion though, he would often advance it as his own. Viewed that way, he would of course champion it to the end as brilliant inspiration.

So I knew that if I were to present him with this cat with the suggestion that it would be a good replacement for the one he'd lost, he'd reject it out-of-hand. I had to work the cat into Glen's own worldview. So I concocted an elaborate storyline. I bought a carrying case for the cat, coaxed the hapless little creature into it, and set out early one morning. After long plotting, I had attached a note to the carrying case. The note read:

I'm sory I stoll your cat. It was so butiful, I wanted it. But now I'm sory. I got this other cat and desided to give it to you to make up for what I did. It's a reel nice kitty. I know you will luv it and it will luv you. 

Or something like that. I perhaps didn't go quite so heavy on the misspellings, but I tried to make the note sound as if it might have come from one of the semi-literate street people whom Glen always suspected of waiting a chance to steal from the rotting woodpile beside his garage. And so I left the caged kitten meowing piteously after me in Glen's back yard, and high-tailed it out of there.

A few days passed and I didn't hear from Glen. I was getting really worried about the kitten. Had Glen found the loaded carrying case I'd deposited by his rickety back staircase? Had he found it before the kitten could finish the food I left with it and starve? Had I presented the cat as enough of a part of Glen's own scheme of things to make it acceptable to him? There were so many forks in the road where this project could have taken a wrong turn. Then the poor kitten whose cries told me it knew it was being abandoned to an uncertain fate - would never find a home.

Finally - Glen called. I listened, more impatient than ever, as he gloated about the TV he'd found in the alley. He couldn't get any actual picture on it - yet. But he was sure that if he just went in there and adjusted the raster, he'd have a perfectly workably set. That was another project he'd get around to - sometime. Really, he didn't know why people threw out perfectly good sets like that. Meanwhile I was silently shrieking, "Yes, but what about the cat? What about the cat?" Of course I couldn't ask him anything out loud and tip my hand.

Eventually though, my long wait came to an end. Glen very casually mentioned that someone had left a cat in his yard. I was surprised and disappointed that he broached the subject almost as an aside. I thought he might take the appearance of the kitten as he took so many things that came his way - as signs that the universe was magically in tune with him and attentive to his secret wishes. At the very least, I thought he would triumph by the cat's appearance, taking it as confirmation of what he'd maintained all along - that his vanished alley cat had been stolen by an envious passerby. But no. He was perfectly nonchalant about the advent of the new cat into his back yard. Indeed, he sounded alarmingly indifferent. I got the sinking feeling that the adoption had not gone through. Surely he'd be excited if his found wealth had been augmented by a new pet.

However, as I'd been thinking these dismal thoughts, Glen had been elaborating. He described how the cat had been left in a nice new carrying case. He said that he could make use of that anyway. As for the cat itself, he said that he suspected some attempt to mislead him there, some additional twist to the conspiracies that his neighbors were engaging in against him.

"What?" I caught my breath.

'Yes," he said that a note had been tied to the carrying case - a note with a lot of misspellings. But he said that he was sure that the person who wrote the note was actually highly literate.

(Oh no! Where had I gone wrong?) I asked Glen what he meant.

He said that well, the words "sorry" and "decided" and so forth had been misspelled in the note, but that the ignorance was obviously faked. He could tell this for sure because elsewhere in the note, the writer had correctly used the contraction "it's" with the appropriate apostrophe. Glen said that only a literate person knows when to use that apostrophe, and when to omit it. He had taught college for a while, and the vast majority of even his senior students hadn't mastered the distinction between "its" (the possessive form) and "it's" a contraction of the verb phrase "it is.") So obviously, this whole business of the cat was part of another plot against him - or else - Glen proceeded with frightening shrewdness - the cat had been left by a friend who was having a little fun with him. That would be some friend who was a good writer, someone interested in writing as a career. Then with oily conclusion, Glen asked "Did you leave the note?"

I was aghast. I blustered a denial. My denial was probably as unconvincing as my misspellings had been. But Glen didn't press the point and I let ride my indignation over his suggestion that I had been the perpetrator. With great trepidation, I asked what had happened to the cat.

Glen said he had opened the carrying case out in his yard to play with the cat, but as soon as he'd sprung the door, the cat had bolted. It ran around to the front of his house, out of view. He thought he heard some tires screech and he assumed the cat had run out into traffic. Wanting to remain in denial, Glen went back into his house without looking what had happened to the cat. And that was that.

Another whisker of tragedy to us humans; a whole world to the kitten. After that I have never again been able to deny any stray cat's appeal to me to be adopted.

I've also learned how careful I will have to be if I ever murder my spouse. In any fake suicide note I attempt, I'll have to watch my apostrophes. With forensic linguists on my trail, I might not stand much of a chance.