I was perusing the Local the other day and noticed that this column now has a title: “But Seriously …”

Thank goodness!

Previously published articles in this space lacked a column title to guide them and had recklessly meandered all over the place, from trash bags to washing machines to dentists to cults. Tom Cruise even made an appearance. These articles served no real purpose, had many digressions, and were very disjointed. Or was it dentists with washing machines who used trash bags? I don’t remember. Candidly, the meandering has gotten so bad that I’ve been skipping over these pieces to scan for coupons instead. Wait, maybe it was Tom Cruise who had the washing machine?

In any event, with the advent of the newly minted column title, we shall now have clarity. As my great aunt Matilda from the old country (New Jersey) would say, “Is today Sunday?” Which would lead to someone clarifying that today was not, in fact, Sunday. You get my point: clarity.

“But Seriously” is the new, unifying theme this column will henceforth march to. It will serve as the column’s North Star and provide much needed direction and meaning. Seriousness, not foolishness, will rule the day.

I do have a concern, however.

I’m a little bit vexed that starting the column title with the word “But” might undermine the going-forward seriousness and scholarliness of this column. Although I hate to do research of any kind as it requires time and thought, I made a one-time-only exception and see that many academic writing labs explicitly state that beginning a sentence with “But” is — are you sitting down for this? — conversational, rather than scholarly. Whoa, not good. And also begs the question: What exactly is an academic writing lab?

These self-same labs also frown upon, look askance at, and otherwise pooh-pooh the overuse of something called “conjunctions” of which “But” is apparently a card-carrying member.

Which reminds me, I once had conjunctivitis as a small child and thought maybe I would work in some hilarious — but still very serious — conjunction/conjunctivitis humor right about now. After a lot of reflection, however, I’ve decided that less is more. You’re welcome.

Lastly, the writing lab overlords ominously state that the use of “But” in a title may weaken the perceived objectivity of the content. This I am actually OK with. In fact, I pride myself on weak and nonobjective content.

Freshly buoyed by the thought of future columns featuring weak and nonobjective content, I think we can give the starting “But” a pass for now.

Moving to the positive side of the ledger, I was excited to see the three-dot ellipsis icon (“…”) included in the column title, and I immediately wanted to click on it to access the drop-down menu. I anticipated an archive of past articles and maybe some background information on Tom Cruise’s washing machine or something about how to join local cults. To my dismay, access to the ellipsis link appears to be missing. This is embarrassing, but maybe it’s just my computer. So I contacted the help desk that supports my platform and explained the situation.

After a multi-hour, in-depth technical analysis, the help desk reported back and concluded that using “But” in the title of a very serious-minded column such as this one is “wrongheaded.” We then swapped jokes about, and shared a lot of laughs over, the now much-maligned starting “But” and other grammatical follies. All in a very scholarly way.

However — and please note that I intentionally did not start this sentence with the B-word as I am now totally gun shy — this did not resolve the three-dot ellipsis icon problem. When I asked about that, the help desk simply stated that “I do not think it means what you think it means” and ended the call. Weird, huh?

I guess we’ll just have to live with it for now until the Local prioritizes my IT fix-it ticket.

So, in summary, I’m thrilled with the new column title, all buts aside. I do not currently have conjunctivitis. IT will fix the ellipsis icon — apologies if this has inconvenienced you. And as my great aunt Matilda from the old country (still New Jersey) would say, “Are we there yet?”

D.W. Palmer is a humorist from West Norriton and writes about the lighter side of the human experience. He will definitely not be writing future unserious articles about Bigfoot or the impending Robotic Invasion.