We can’t guarantee they haven’t been scribbled in anywhere. They’re treasures, “collector’s items” (according to one colleague who thumbed through them often in the eighties and nineties).
Nowadays we turn to Copilot, ChatGPT or vandale.nl with any linguistic queries. Is there an ‘n’ in ‘bokkenpruik’, or is it ‘bokkepruik’? Southern Netherlands, is that Zuid-Nederlands or Zuidnederlands? Nota bene or notabene? If we’re to believe the words of NRC columnist Japke-d. Bouma, then “absolutely nobody cares” about correct, flawless language use anymore. “Geld op de rijbaan tussen 13.00 en 18.00 uur” or “Geldt op de rijbaan tussen 13.00 en 18.00 uur?” A small difference between time and money, she joked in one of her columns.
Thankfully, all of us at Observant are the type of language fanatic who is horrified by even the smallest error. We have our own ‘style guidelines’. They’re not as neatly bundled as the paper version from 2002 which can still be found lying around (title: Useful rules for our little Obs). The author of this document was clearly fed up with the endless back and forth about the right way to abbreviate things (CvB [EB], pgo [pbl], AZM [now MUMC+]). We say 30 thousand, not 30,000. Foreign words should be in italics, as should book titles. Exclamation marks? The style guide from 2002 says, “use with care”. We should also “use the term UM’er” sparingly.
Which UM’er wants these books if the university library doesn’t?