"Eats,
Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" by Lynne
Truss entertained me. I learned a few things, too.
Truss takes to task
the errant punctuation found through common language. She even finds problems
in Amazon.com reviews. I cannot disagree; my own reviews are littered with errors.
She cites a review of Hugh Grant's movie "About a Boy". The reviewer,
like so many of us, did not proofread his work, and left his shame available in
review form.
While
claiming not to be about class distinction, in the British sense George Bernard
Shaw meant to reduce in "Pygmalion," she still comes across as arrogant.
There is no way to avoid this poise of authoritative injunction. Punctuation is
a perfect science with imperfect applications. We readers tolerate (or completely
miss) errors because we understand both the message and the messenger.
Truss'
examples are humorous. Her writing is bright, with all British overtones. These
overtones were resident in the original English edition, and the copy published
in America is verbatim. It works to highlight the accidents of poor punctuation
pervasively nicking our writing. By selectively altering a comma here and there,
she shows how meaning is sometimes entirely changed. That's good to remember.
She
is clear in the beginning to say this is not a grammar book. Grammar is not punctuation,
she correctly says. However, she misleads the reader into believing this is a
punctuation book. It's not. It is about punctuation, with many stories, anecdotes,
tales and lessons teaching proper punctuation. The book never closes in on being
purely a list of 'dos and don'ts'. It is valuable for that, especially as her
style welcomes the reader more than the standard reference book on the topic.
She encompasses punctuation as the basis for her book, but Truss never lets the
method arrest its entertainment value.
Intelligent
readers for whom the use of language matters will indubitably learn something.
Throughout
are citings of the kinds of punctuation mistakes forwarded in e-mails by editors
to their friends.
This
book is a primer, at best, but completely incomplete. We are taught quickies in
the usage of apostrophes, commas, colons, ellipses, semicolons, dashes and, in
her estimation, the rarely used hyphen.
Who
should read "Eats, Shoots & Leaves"? Smug freshman copyediting students
and their pretentious high school counterparts, full-time professional editors
who need to remember they are not alone, anyone who makes a living joining letters
on a page, and junior high school English teachers who need never forget that
even their best efforts will not teach every student. Most of all, as I'm confident
Truss would agree, amateur book reviewers like myself should read this; we could
learn the proper use of a semicolon.
I
fully recommend "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to
Punctuation" by Lynne Truss. It will not replace your AP, Chicago, MLA or
APA stylebooks, but it will add to your enjoyment of their much-needed use.
Anthony
Trendl
