SECKS

#298 S.E.X.

Got your attention? Good. The letters stand for Society for the Elimination of “X.”

Twenty five letters instead of 26. A lot easier to handle. And we haven’t needed “x” since the beginning of time.

Think about it. You can spell every word in the English language without it.

Zerox. Zylophone . Zavier. Zylem. Secks. Ecks marks the spot. Ecksclamation, to site only a few eggzamples.

It’s time we stopped putting all our x in one basket.

But this is not an easy fight. And that’s why we need to form S.E.X. And we need to do this pretty fast, before someone legislates a 26 letter alphabet and its components.

Probably, there’ll be a huge uproar from the ecks-rated film industry, and maybe the music industry (after all, “All My Ecks-es Live In Texas” IS a country classic.)

And it’s important to remember that SEC, the Society for the Elimination of “C,” failed. But there were reasons for that which don’t apply here. First, without “c” you can’t make the “ch” sound. The hard “c,” of course, can be written with a “k.”

But C is also the single most widely used scholastic grade and its elimination would mean an end to the standard A, B, C, D, F rotation common to most secondary schools. There are far too many “c” students to eliminate all use of the letter.

“X” doesn’t have that problem. It hs no unique pronunciation. It’s confusing. And there’s no “X” grade possible on a report card (though there are times it seems there should be.)

It might be handy to keep around as an historical artifact at, say, railroad crossings or on treasure maps. Maybe even on Ecks-ray machines. But other than that, there’s no use for this letter. It’s been outdated since the time of the Ecksodus.

And we might have to adjust the spelling of the number sicks. Maybe make it siks so it isn’t confused with people who have illnesses.

So, yes, there are some little problems, but nothing we can’t work out.

In olden times such a change would be a waste of natural resources. After all, more moveable type would have been necessary if we were to replace every “x” with “ecks.” But since we don’t use all that much moveable type anymore, that’s a poor eckscuse.

Then there are the “X” abusers. Look at Ecks-On. So many eckstra eckses. And the telephone makers. Each has an “X.” How many times have you dialed an “x” since you’ve had that telephone? All those poor abused or neglected eckses.

You can join our new society by simply saying you have.

No salesman will call.

I'm el Ecksahente, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR