

“A ploof?” I asked.

“Yes!” he grinned.

Curious, I asked him whether a ploof was used to end a sentence like a period, divide a sentence like a comma, or what other purpose it might serve.

“It divides a word,” he answered matter-of-factly.

Hmmmm. “Does it divide compound words, or does it divide words into syllables?” I asked.

His answer wasn’t clear, but a few questions later, I was convinced he thought the ploof was used to divide compound words, not syllables.

I have to admit, he was so convincing I had to go home and Google “ploof”. After all, there was a punctuation mark called a tilde, which I once found hard to believe, but there it is, in the grammar books, in black and white.

Maybe someone out there who is a linguist or grammarian (or whoever is an expert in such matters) knows something more on this subject, but I’m beginning to suspect this ploof thing doesn’t actually exist.

Andrew likes things that are silly, or sound silly, or can be made to sound silly. Perhaps a ploof just fit the bill, or perhaps he actually heard something he interpreted this way and was just passing on his new-found knowledge, albeit incorrect. He likes the concept of a ploof, and would likely like the tilde, too, with its funny name and odd shape. He’s much less enamored with superfluous things like say, addition and subtraction.

My challenge is to find out how to make math silly, at least some of the time, so that it has the same allure as ploof. Luckily, Andrew’s mother has the same penchant for silly that he does, so that shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Leslie Phillips