Entries pouring in for 11-Word Essay Contest, but one question arises

Still plenty of time to enter the contest and win a swell prize

The 11-Word Essay Contest just started, already there are questions.

Count 'em up, the above sentence has exactly 11 words indeed.

Don't worry, no intention for every sentence to have 11 words.

Enough.

I mean, what if that was our reality, that somewhere the rules of grammar required every single sentence to have exactly 11 words and that's just the way it was.

Imagine a society where people would be jailed or fined or banished to Manitoba for life if they used 12 words in a sentence.

Still, since the 11-Word Essay Contest was announced last week, the response has been overwhelming.

Which means that "whelming" must also be a word, though I've never seen it written or spoken or used in any manner whatsoever.

After all, if "whelming" is not a word, then how can something be "overwhelming"?

Oddly, "whelming" sounds ever more significant than "overwhelming."

As in, "The Rams whelmed the 49ers" vs. "The Rams overwhelmed the 49ers."

Clearly, at least for me, whelmed sounds much more devastating.

While 98 percent of the entries so far have been 11 words on the nose, I got several that were shockingly only nine words. But maybe the author lost his big toe to frostbite during our last cold snap and has no way to count past nine.

One thing that I may not have made clear is that one day, no doubt, one of the 11-word entries is going to win the Pulitzer Prize.

The prize comes with a certificate and a check for $15,000.

For sure, the winner of the 11-Word Essay Contest gets the certificate, but I may need the cash to help fund the swell prize of a dinner for two with my sweetheart and me, tip included.

In the rare possibility that an 11-word entry wins the Nobel Prize, we'll split that award right down the middle.

And how much does the Nobel Prize pay?

Well, apparently in honor of the revival of the 11-Word Essay Contest, it pays exactly 11 million kronor, or one million kronor per word.

The most pressing rules question to arise so far comes from a chap named Mark, a man who knows a thing or two about writing.

Mark begins by saying, "Your readership is older, so this is probably moot."

"Older?"

Apparently, ageism is alive and well in The City of All Things Right and Relevant.

Trust me, I'm not going to take that insult lying down. Wait, it's time for my nap.

Asks Mark, "I wonder how the frequent abbreviations used in internet discourse figures into the word count.”

In other words, Marks asks, "If i wrote 'and it's not even close,' that's four words, but are the common AINEC and AFAIK just one?"

First, let's clean up your math, Mark.

"And it's not even close" is actually five words, not four.

So Mark's question, as I understand it, is about acronyms, not to be confused with synonyms, homonyms or church hymns.

Adds Mark, "SCOTUS" turns six words into one."

Sure does. And "POTUS" is likely to become "POUTUS" when Donald Trump doesn't get his way.

But Mark has a valid question that was not covered in the extensive rules that accompanied the announcement of the 11-Word Essay Contest last week.

A small oversight by the contest's Large Judging Body (me), which probably explains why I am not in charge of the mission to Mars.

"Hey, nobody told me we were supposed to bring them back to earth."

So here's the deal.

Forced to shoot from the hip and make a decision on the fly, I hereby declare that up to one acronym per entry will be allowed and counted as a single word.

If this leads to a SNAFU that forces me to declare the contest FUBAR, so be it.

I can't have this worldwide audience of people of all ages thinking I'm TOFA. (Too Old For Acronyms).

Reach me at bobdunning@thewaryone.com

(Entries are due by the stroke of midnight on Monday, January 13, 2025. For complete contest rules, see "A contest for writers who like to pen extremely short essays.")

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