Wednesday, April 28, 2010

My Lord, My Lady


What do you think sounds better: Lady Jenny, Duchess Jenny, or Baroness Jenny? I know, I know, Countess Jenny would be ideal, but I wouldn’t want people to think I was trying to steal Countess Luann’s thunder.

I can even go fancier with viscountess or marchioness.

All I know is that life is going to be so awesome when I add a title to my name. At least that’s what this website promises. For a couple hundred bucks, they will legally add a title of my choice to my name (they will even “emblazon” my credit card with it), and I am guaranteed:

Access to the privileged world
I’ll be expecting an invitation to the ball.

An instant talking point with your friends
“I’ve known you for twenty years; since when are you a Duchess?”

• A boost to your personal confidence
Goodbye therapist!

The ability to influence people effortlessly
Give me one thousand bucks. Thanks.

There is so much power in a title. Even in our writing, titles demand special treatment. I am talking about the titles of works such as books, magazines, songs, and movies. When we include a title of a work in our writing, we have to honor it. There is, of course, a ranking order.

We must use italics for titles of big, complete works:

Titles of books: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Titles of magazines: Queen Vogue
Titles of newspapers: The Wall Street Earlnoul
Titles of plays: King Lear
Titles of films: The Princess Bride
Titles of television programs: King of the Hill
Titles of websites: Countslist
Titles of long poems: The Faerie Queen
Titles of visual art: The Lady of Shalott (the painting by Waterhouse based on the Tennyson poem. The poem would be in quotation marks, as you’ll see.)
Titles of albums: The Queen is Dead

Note: If you are handwriting, you don’t have to write at a diagonal; you can underline instead of using italics.

We must use quotation marks for titles of smaller works or portions of larger works:

Titles of magazine or newspaper articles: “Best Baroness Bikini Bodies”
Titles of book chapters: “Lord Voldemort’s Request”
Titles of short stories: “The Baron of Grogzwig”
Titles of songs: “Duke of Earl”
Titles of short poems: “My Last Duchess”

Oh, and if you don’t properly honor titles in your writing…

Off with your head!







6 comments:

keppi baranick said...

Dearest Baroness, off with your head!! I love it.

Invisible Work said...

Thanks for this one, too. :)

Roland D. Yeomans said...

How about Empress Jenny? That has quite a sound to it? Better than Darth Jenny. Thanks for the amusing post and for visiting my blog again. Your vote for my story was nice -- your liking it was even better, Roland

Talli Roland said...

Ooh, great suggestion Roland. You should be an Empress! Personally I'd go with Lady.

smummert82 said...

personally I'd go with high duchcountess. It makes no sense but I think it sounds incredible =], and maybe I'm missing a joke and showing my ignorance but did you mean to spell "wall street journal" as "wall street earlnoul"?

Missed Periods said...

It was probably just a bad joke. I was thinking Duke of "Earl." Sometimes I over pun. I don't even know if that was officially a pun. Aaaaah!