Transcript Eats, shoots & leaves The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, 2004

Eats, shoots & leaves
The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
by
Lynne Truss, 2004
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it,
then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda
makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly
punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his
shoulder.
“ I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough,
finds an explanation.
“Panda. Large black-and-while bear-like mammal,
native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
To the memory of the striking Bolshevik
printers of St. Petersburg who, in 1995,
demanded to be paid the same rate for
punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby
directly precipitated the first
Russian Revolution
Punctuation is a system of
printers’ marks that had aided
the clarity of the written word
for the past half-millennium,
and if its time had come to be
replaced, let’s just use this
moment to celebrate what an
elegant and imaginative job it
did while it had the chance.
Caring about matters of language is
unfortunately generally associated
with small-minded people, but that
doesn’t make it a small issue.
The Seventh Sense
“Come inside, for CD’s, VIDEO’s, DVD’s,
and BOOK’s”
“Two Weeks Notice”
“Can you spare any old records”
“eight items or less”
“The judges decision is final”
While some people look in horror
at a badly punctuated sign, the
world carries on around us, blind
for our plight. Those people are
like the little boy in The Sixth
Sense who can see dead people,
except that they can see dead
punctuation.
Punctuation Defined
• The basting that holds the fabric of language in
shape.
• The traffic signals of language: they tell us to
slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
• The courtesy designed to help readers to
understand a story without stumbling.
• The line along which the train (composition,
style, writing) must travel if it isn’t to run away
with its driver.
When punctuation is not used
• Language come apart, obviously, and all the
buttons fall off.
• Words bang into each other and everyone ends
up in Minehead.
• A sentence no longer holds the door open for
you to walk in , but drops it in your face as you
approach.
• You and your writing will go off-line with your
words dead and scattered around.
Punctuation marks are traditionally
either “separators”
or “terminators”.
Between Staunch and Flexible
Punctuation is being governed
“Two-thirds by rule and one-third by
personal taste”
G.V. Carey, Mind the Stop,
Cambridge University Press, 1939
Examples
•
A woman without her man is nothing
•
•
A woman, without her man, is nothing
A woman: without her, man is nothing
Examples
It is under these circumstances that we feel
constrained to call upon you to come to our aid
should a disturbance arise here the
circumstances are so extreme that we cannot
but believe that you and the men under you will
not fail to come to the rescue of people who
are so situated.
Put the period after the word “aid” once then
after “here” and see the change in meaning.
Examples
• “Charles the First walked and talked half
an hour after his head was cut off”
• “Charles the First walked and talked. Half
an hour after, his head was cut off”
Why a cat is not a comma?
A cat has claws
at the ends of its paws.
A comma’s a pause
at the end of a clause.
The Tractable Apostrophe
Means in Greek “turning away”
and hence “omission” or “elision”
• In the 16th century
First picked up and used to mark dropped letters
• In the 17th century
Intruded before the “s” in singular possessive cases
“the girl’s dress”
• In the 18th century
Put after plural possessives as well “ the girls’ dresses”
Apostrophe's Tasks
Indicates a possessive
• Singular noun
– The boy’s hat
• Plural without s
– The children’s playground
• Regular plural
– The boys’ hats
Apostrophe’s Tasks
•
•
•
•
•
Indicates time or quantity
In one week’s time
Indicates omission of figures in dates
The summer of ’68
Indicates the omission of letters
We can’t go to Jo’burg
It’s your turn
It’s got very cold
The Contractive
and the Possessive
• The rule is: the word “it’s” (with
apostrophe) stands for “it is” or “it has”.
• If the word does not stand for “it is” or “it
has” then what you require is “its”.
• Thank God its Friday
• Thank God it’s Friday
No matter that you have a Ph.D.
and have read
all of Henry James twice.
If you still persist in writing,
“Good food at it’s best”, you deserve
to be struck by lightning,
hacked up on the spot
and buried in an unmarked grave.
Apostrophe’s Tasks
Features in Irish names
• O’Neill and O’Casey
– The O in the Irish names is an anglicisation of
“ua”, meaning grandson.
Indicates the plurals of letters
• How many f’s are there in Fulham?
Apostrophe’s Tasks
Indicates plurals of words
• What are the do’s and don’t’s?
• Are there too many but’s and and’s at the
beginning of sentences these days?
The Lifted Task
• It no longer has to appear in the plurals
abbreviations (“MPs”) or plural dates
(“1980s”).
Apostrophe’s Tasks
Abolish the apostrophe
and it will be necessary,
before the hour is up,
to reinvent it.
That’ll Do, Comma
Thurber and Ross
• “Why to you have a comma in the
sentence, ‘After dinner, the men went into
the living room’?”
• “This particular comma, was Ross’s way of
giving the men time to push back their
chairs and stand up.”
“No dogs please”
Only one person in a thousand
bothers to point out that
actually the statement
is an indefensible generalization,
since many dogs
do please.
That’ll Do, Comma
• Means in Greek “a piece cut off”
• Adopted in the 16th century
• Purpose was to guide actors, chanters and
readers-aloud indicating the pauses,
accentuating matters of sense and sound.
• Aldus Manutius the Elder invented the
italic typeface and printed the first
semicolon
That’ll Do, Comma
• Aldus Manutius the Younger stated in
1566 that the main object of punctuation
was the clarification of syntax.
• Two distinct function
– Illuminate grammar of a sentence
– Point up rhythm, direction, pitch, tone and
flow.
Comma’s Tasks
Commas for lists
• The four refreshing fruit flavors of Opal
Fruits are orange, lemon, strawberry and
lime.
Comma’s Tasks
The Oxford comma
• The flag is red, white, and blue
• I went to the chemist, Marks & Spencer,
and NatWest.
• They tell us to slow down, notice this, take
a detour, and stop.
(three or four instructions)
Comma’s Tasks
List of Adjectives
Use the comma where an and would be appropriate.
• It was a dark, stormy night.
• He was a tall, bearded man.
Do not use a comma for
• It was an endangered white rhino
• The grand old Duke of York had ten
thousand men.
Comma’s Tasks
Commas for joining
Complete sentences with conjunctions
as and, or, but, while and yet
• The boys wanted to stay up until midnight,
but they grew tired and fell asleep.
• I thought I had the biggest bag of fruits, yet
Cathy proved me wrong.
Comma’s Tasks
Commas before direct speech
• The queen said, “Doesn’t anyone know it’s
my birthday?”
Commas setting off interjections
• Stop, or I’ll scream.
Comma’s Tasks
•
•
•
Commas that come in pairs
(weak interruption)
I am, of course, going steadily nuts
Nicholas Nickleby, published in 1839, uses a
great many commas.
(should be removed)
The leading stage director, Nicholas Hytner,
has been appointed to the Royal National
Theatre.
Comma’s Tasks
Important grammatical point
• The people in the queue who managed to
get tickets were very satisfied.
Some people did not get tickets
• The people in the queue, who managed to
get tickets, were very satisfied.
Everyone got tickets
A Grammatical Point
• If the clause between the commas is
“defining”, commas are not needed.
– The Highland Terries that live in our street
aren’t cute at all
– The Highland Terries, when they are barking,
are a nightmare.
Comma’s Big Final Rule
Don’t use commas like a stupid person
• Leonora walked on her head, a little higher than
usual.
• The driver managed to escape from the vehicle
before it sank and swam to the river-bank.
• Don’t guess, use a timer or watch.
• The convict said the judge is mad.
Airs and Graces
The Colon and Semicolon
• They are about expectation and elastic energy.
Like internal springs, they propel you forward in
a sentence towards more information.
• Semicolon lightly propels you in any direction
related to the foregoing.
• The colon nudges you along lines already subtly
laid down.
The Colon and Semicolon
• The colon delivers the goods that have
been invoiced in the preceding words.
– Tom has only one rule in life: never eat
anything bigger than your head.
– I pulled out all the stops with kerry-Anne: I
used a semicolon.
– I loved Opal fruits as a child: no one else did.
– You can do it: and you will do it.
The Colon and Semicolon
– Man proposes: God disposes.
– I find fault with only three things in this story or
yours, Jenkins: the beginning, the middle and
the end.
Colons introduce the part of a sentence that
exemplifies, restates, elaborates, undermines,
explains or balances the preceding part.
The Colon and Semicolon
• Colons start lists (especially lists using
semicolons)
• They set off book and film sub-titles from
the main titles:
– Ghandi II: The Mahatma Strikes Back
The Colon and Semicolon
• The main place for a semicolon is between
two related sentences where there is no
conjunction such as “and” or “but”.
– It was the baying of an enormous hound; it
came from over there!
– I remember him when he couldn’t write his
own name on a gate; now he’s Prime Minister
Indispensable Semicolon
• Fares were offered to Corfu, the Greek island;
Morocco; Elba, in the Mediterranean; and Paris.
Margaret thought about it. She had been to Elba
once and found it dull; to Morocco, and found it
too colorful.
Special Policeman Semicolon (for comma fights)
•
The Colon and Semicolon
Sense changes with punctuation
• Tom locked himself in the shed. England
lost to Argentina.
• Tom locked himself in the shed; England
lost to Argentina.
• Tom locked himself in the shed: England
lost to Argentina.
Cutting a Dash
exclamation mark, dash, italic, question mark
• Exclamation mark is used to salute, admire,
emphasize, irony, e-mail salutations.
• Whereas a dash is used to connect (or separate)
sentences, the hyphen is used to connect (or
separate) individual words.
• Italics are used for,
– Titles of books, emphasis of certain words, foreign
words, examples on language
Cutting a Dash
exclamation mark, dash, italic, question mark
• Question mark is used when the question
is direct.
– What is the capital of Belgium?
– What was the point of all this sudden interest
in Brussels, he wondered.
• The ellipsis appears in e-mails and
shorthand, meaning “more to come”.
•
Double Dashes
• Bracketing device
o He was (I still can’t believe this!) trying to
climb in the window.
o He was -I still can’t believe this!- trying to
climb in the window.
Can you tell the difference?
Types, Shapes, Names of Brackets
•
•
•
•
Round brackets (called parentheses in US)
Square brackets [called brackets in US]
Brace brackets {derived from maths}
Angle brackets <linguistic and technical uses>
• Angle shape the earliest to appear
• Brackets (as for a bookshelf ) lift up a section of
the sentence, holding it above the rest.
Uses of Brackets
• Add information, clarify, explain and
illustrate.
– Starburst (formerly known as Opal Fruits) are
available in all corner shops.
• Square brackets for clarifying direct quote,
and enclosing ellipsis
– She had used [Tom Jones] for far too many
examples by this stage.
Ellipsis (or three dots)
• Very specific uses
– Indicate word missing … from a quoted
passage
– Trail off in a intriguing matte …
A Little Used Mark (Hyphen)
• Name comes from the Greek.
• Uses of the hyphen,
– Avoid ambiguity (re-formed, re-mark)
– Spell out numbers (thirty-two, forty-nine)
– Link nouns with nouns (London-Brighton train)
– Link adjectives to adjectives (AmericanFrench relations)
– Noun phrase qualifies another noun
(stainless-steel kitchen, corrugate-iron roof)
A Little Used Mark (Hyphen)
• Uses of hyphen (continued)
– Certain prefixes (anti-Apartheid, quasi-steady)
– Spell out certain words (K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M)
– Avoid letter collision (de-ice, shell-like)
– Indicate unfinished word that continues on the
next line
– Hesitation and stammering (I reached the ww-w-w-watering can)
– Qualify a hyphenated phrase beforehand (He
was a two- or three-year-old.)
Merely Conventional Signs
• Emotions are the proper name for smileys.




:-)
;-)
:~/
:-[
happy
winking
mixed up
pouting
:-(
:-r
<:-)
:-O
sad
tongue sticking
dunce (stupid)
surprise
• Text message and verbal shorthand
• “CU B4 8?”
Computers, Reading and Writing
• With text messaging and emailing becoming
such compulsive universal activities, reading
and writing are now more a fact of everyday life
than they have ever been.
• “The human linguistic faculty seems to be in
good shape. The arrival of Netspeak is showing
us homo loquens at its best”
David Crystal
A Last Word
• Proper punctuation is both the sign and
cause of clear thinking.
• We should fight like tigers to preserve
punctuation, and we should start now.
• The purpose of punctuation is “to tango
the reader into the pauses, inflections,
continuities and connections that the
spoken line would convey.” Thomas McCormack.