The Curious Case Of A Misnomer


My last post created quite a furore over the use of the “word” KT as in ATKT. It is wrong to term “KT” as a word, although in shorthand, people prefer KT, than ATKT, or failure or the full form for the matter.

So, ATKT which we all know what stands for, is a tag provided free of cost to students doing professional courses, by the University they are affiliated to, on failing to score the minimum marks (usually 40) in a subject. Further talking about the minimum score, if you have 5 subjects to clear and fail only in one with around 32 (31, in some cases) marks or more, then you are eligible for the alms (read grace marks) and you will eventually pass and can post a Facebook story on how you kissed the ATKT factory.

Apostrophe
Apostrophe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Straining on the misnomer “KT,” first of all, and if at all you still want to use it for convenience, you gotta stop adding apostrophe to it. Like “KT’s” is such bad punctuation, it makes me believe you sucked at 4th grade English basics. “KT’s” (with an apostrophe) technically means you are tagging something which belongs to KT. And to pluralize it, you add the letter “s” without an apostrophe. This will give you  “KTs” which is grammatically & sensibly wrong. But, students & professors alike use “KTs” in their daily conversations & it has become a memory. [Please read The Oatmeal’s guide on using apostrophes! It is as funny as it can be.]

Deep down, KTs will mean “Keep Terms.” So when you say “I have 2 KTs,” you are actually making a fool of yourself, saying “I have 2 Keep Terms.” Tell me, does this make any sense? This is worse than Borat! And if you say “I have 2 KT’s,” it will mean that you are dumb as a pigeon and have not completed your sentence. The listener will unfriend you from his mind and you will never know that you are in their Restricted list on Facebook.

To make things clear, the best & right way to state your result is: “I am allowed to keep term in 2 subjects.” Or simply: “I failed in two subjects.” The coward’s way of stating is: “Don’t ask! Seems the college wants to burn a hole in my wallet.

So, to sound grammatically correct, you gotta stop using the misnomer. Surely it won’t affect you till your funeral, but if you wanna stand out, embrace this post.

PS: Failures depends on lots of factors and the college’s internal money-making strategy is a stronghold.

 

 


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