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Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
By Lynne Truss
Profile Books - Hardback
209 pages
£9.99
Dateline: 2nd May, 2004
A book about punctuation, reviewed on a theatre website? Why, for goodness'
sake?
Apart from the fact that, as defined by the book, I am a pedant (Ms
Truss prefers a "stickler"), there are not many things more
important to drama than the language in which it is written. It's also
important to you, the readers of sites like the BTG, for if we get the
language wrong, you don't understand what we say or even get hold of
entirely the wrong end of the stick. Punctuation is as much a guide
to meaning as syntax and grammar: to ignore it leads to confusion.
Ms Truss uses the perfect example. In the Book of Isaiah, God says,
"Comfort ye my people": that is, "Give comfort to my
people". Or does He? (Notice the capitalisation of He: now
there's pedantry for you!) Did he not say, "Comfort ye, my people"
- "My people, be comforted"? That little tadpole makes one
hell of a difference!
And in the previous sentence, notice the placing of the punctuation
marks at the end of the quotations: they're all outside the quotation
marks. Why? Because they aren't part of the quotation itself, but are
part of the whole sentence, which includes the quotation. Is that subtle
or what?
What, you think it's too subtle? Of course it isn't! That particular
rule adds a little extra nicety of meaning, giving us a tad more clarity.
Lynne Truss' (or should that be Lynne Truss's?) book is a joy for those
who, like me, take delight in the precise placement of commas, semi-colons
and colons; who get annoyed by omitted - or, worse, misplaced - apostrophes;
and who agonise over whether to use brackets or dashes in particular
situation; who even make a conscious decision about the use of the Oxford
comma (i.e. after the word "and" in a list, either of nouns,
verbs or clauses) in each individual case. (And, incidentally, who changed
back and forth from comma to semi-colon numerous times before finally
settling on a semi-colon before the final clause of the last sentence!)
It reinforces all our punctuational prejudices, thus imparting a warm
glow of self-righteousness!
It is also a very readable book: her enthusiasm and easy style carries
the reader along when so many books on the topic are so dry that reading
them is like sifting dust.
You
can buy Eats,
Shoots & Leaves from our Bookshop for £6.99
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