| EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Lynne Truss Frank McCourt (Fwd.) New York: Gotham Books, 2003 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-592-40087-4 | ||||
| ISBN 1-592-40087-6 | 209pp. | HC/SF | $17.50 | |
Despite her successful career as novelist, television critic and sports columnist for The Times (London), Lynne Truss has a problem with punctuation. Not her own, other people's. When she sees a greengrocer's sign offering "Potatoe's", or the intended pet prohibition "No dog's", her mind is sore oppressed at the general ignorance of such a basic skill. The impulse arises to take out a magic marker and correct the mistake then and there. On the other hand, she recognizes herself as a stickler and thoroughly understands how off-putting her protestations can be to ordinary people. As she puts it on page 5:
In short, we are unattractive know-all obsessives who get things out of proportion and are in continual peril of being disowned by our exasperated families. |
The question, then, is (to paraphrase the Bard) whether to suffer the "sling's and arrow's" or to take arms against a sea of "trouble's". Ms. Truss chose the latter course, and this book is the result. Now, there are many ways to explain the importance of proper punctuation, but the one she prefers is to describe it as "a courtesy designed to help readers understand a story without stumbling".1 I prefer that one too; it is perhaps the gentlest admonishment possible. (My native admonitions tend to be more dictatorial.) That really sets the tone for the entire book. Ms. Truss expresses plenty of outrage at the plague of imperfect punctuation, but it is a mock outrage, and there is enough outright humour2 to make the book's message very easy to take indeed. Examples of what she calls " 'I'm sorry, I'll read that again' jokes" (see pages 8-10) demonstrate this perfectly: When the movement, addition, or deletion of a comma completely changes the meaning of a sentence (often turning it into inadvertent ribaldry), you feel the message hit you where you live.
This is not to say that Lynn Truss is never serious. Peruse pages 13-16, where she reports that the British school system stopped teaching punctuation from 1960 through about 1985. Much of the problem can be laid to this abdication of a vital responsibility, which also took place in many American schools.3
Punctuation is the book's main focus, and Ms. Truss covers the marks one by one, beginning with the apostrophe. She sets forth usage rules clearly and provides useful examples. She also includes puzzling exceptions to the rules ("Keats's poems", but "Jesus' disciples") as well as Brit-Yank differences (Yank "1980's" vs. Brit "1980s"). But this is not a rule book; there is much more discussion of the history of punctuation (e.g. arcana such as the virgula suspensiva, a punctuation mark resembling a forward slash used in medieval times to signal the briefest pause in reading.)
There is some discussion of politics (specifically the current war in Iraq) and of the Internet. After musing on the impact of that new communications medium, with its e-mail and chat functions, Ms. Truss closes with this cogent and lyrical warning (page 201):
If we value the way we have been trained to think by centuries of absorbing the culture of the printed word, we must not allow the language to return to the chaotic scripto continua swamp from which it so bravely crawled less than two thousand years ago. We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and allusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable. |
The book is not without defect. One instance occurs on page 25 where she presents a passage from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as the first known misuse of the full stop (or, as we Yanks say, the period). But she never shows the correct version. (See the errata page for details, and for the few other discrepancies.)
This is a book leavened by Ms. Truss's humour and breezy style, informed by references to history and literature, made topical and timely by speculations on the Internet, the future of books, and the war in Iraq. I would not recommend it as a part of one's library, but I strongly advise everyone to read it.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.