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Review
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach
to Punctuation
Profile Books, November 2003
Author: Lynne Truss
Review by Donald Clark, CEO, Epic Group plc
You've been Punc'd!
If you get the MTV reference in this title, you're likely to be
from a generation that Lynne Truss accuses in this volume of gross
misconduct on punctuation. Its a readable book but it's author gets
a little uptight on rules and electronic media. And by the way,
if you didn't immediately spot the two punctuation errors in the
last sentence, you really MUST read this book!
Even those who know how to use apostrophes are sometimes shaky
on the difference between a dash and a hyphen, a semi-colon and
a colon, between round and square brackets. Let's face it, we're
all a little vague on some of the more esoteric rules.
Anyone who's been involved in the production of content in print
or for the screen knows how frustrating it is to receive prose that
is littered with punctuation errors. It is a particularly sensitive
issue in e-learning as the content is under such scrutiny. I've
had irate telephone calls from people who claim to have uncovered
dozens of errors in scripts and content. On examination, these often
turn out to be questions of style. Will this book solve the problem?
Lynne Truss's (or is it Trusses?!) book is presumably intended
to inspire one with zeal for the proper use of punctuation in what
she sees as a decadent age. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect
on me. The book is a great read, full of fascinating historical
facts and littered with humour, but it is, at heart, a pedant's
manifesto.
It does a credible job in laying out the simpler rules on punctuation,
but once you're on 10th rule on commas or the 17th rule on the use
of hyphens, you realise how plain stupid these rules can be. There
are several problems with many of the more pedantic stipulations:
- They often add nothing to the meaning of the sentence
- They are irregular rules
- Grammarians differ on their application
How is the ordinary person meant to apply rules when they are difficult
to remember, they contradict each other and there is no agreement
on their use? At the end of the book you feel as if you've struggled
through a blizzard of rules - far too many to remember - and many
of them of questionable use.
It almost turned me into a radical reformer on punctuation. Why
have so many rules that are so contradictory? One of my favourite
principles in life is that of 'Occam's Razor' (attributed to the
14th century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham)
which says you should apply the minimum number of entities necessary
to reach your given goal. Punctuation could benefit greatly from
a rule that uses punctuation only when the meaning and rhythm of
a sentence is at stake. When it's not, dump the rule. In practice,
this is what's happening. Many of the obscure rules are being abandoned
by a generation that value quick, effective communication over unnecessary
punctuation.
Lynn is a Guttenburg groupie who, like many print publishing bods,
has a deep distrust of electronic media. This comes out in the last
chapter when she betrays a real ignorance of the use of text beyond
the book. Electronic media are, according to Lynne:
- intrinsically ephemeral
- open to perpetual revision
- devoid of any sense of historical perception
- unmediated
- have no price and are therefore of questionable value
Each and every one of these claims is wrong. In fact, most of what
she regards as print is now faithfully reproduced on the web and
is no more ephemeral, revision-prone, non-historical or unmediated
than its printed counterpart. As for the last statement, that things
are of questionable value because they're free, she really does
need some basic instruction in logic or, even better, common sense.
It's the fact that they're free that makes them more valuable. This
is tunnel vision at its worst. Page 181, which is a rant against
new media, made me even angrier than I get when I see no understanding
of basic punctuation.
If it's instruction you want, try one of the several good books
listed in the bibliography at the end of the book, as this book
is strictly for entertainment. In fact, it's really a smug little
book written for an old and grumpy audience. It also, rather annoyingly,
doesn't have an index. This makes it useless as a reference book,
surely one of its intended purposes.
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