I passionately love the French language and I believe all that the grammar asserts, and I savour the exceptions and the irregularities of our language.

Jules Renard (1864-1910)
Writer

“We adopted a war orphan whose father was killed at Verdun and whose mother died just a few days later. The child was ten years old and had been put in a Christian Brother’s boarding school by his grandparents, and we helped with his needs. However, this little man needed pocket money and the following way was thought up to procure it for him. My students had a disease that has perhaps disappeared in our day in age called the spelling-error sickness, and the professors at the Sorbonne, still guardians of tradition at the time, considered this disease to be a very serious illness indeed, and graded the baccalaureate examinations of stricken students severely. How could this disease be cured? By common and solemn accord it was agreed that each spelling mistake would earn a fine of ten to twenty cents, depending on the gravity of the error, and that the fine would be paid from the pocket money of the offender, given to the collector, the class policeman. At the end of the month, this would become the providential allowance of our orphan. The first month our little adopted man found himself rich, but as I expected, even if my students did not, the allowance of the orphan became smaller and smaller as the months went by. Spelling errors were too expensive and weighed heavy on the wallet. Students started to pay attention, to correct their spelling, more or less. I advise this prescription for all children stricken with spelling-error sickness… you have only to allow them to adopt an orphan. Even if they have good intentions, they’ll rather correct themselves definitively than ruin themselves financially.”

20th Century author
Writer