Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Panda Punctuation Book

When I started reading Lynne Truss’s book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves,” I was excited about the information she promised to deliver. Finally, I would understand the use of the comma, my punctuation nemesis. And I loved the tone she took. I could hear my mother’s voice, all snooty and British, explaining proper “usage” to me. My mother prided herself on her knowledge of grammar and was quick to correct me when I spoke anything less than "The Queen’s English." Mum spent a lot of her time protecting her Canadian-born children from adopting any nasty colonial customs. Ketchup was forbidden in our house, especially spelled that way.

I see where Truss is coming from. Punctuation is essential to the written word because the written word is the spoken word without the benefit of the speaker’s voice, gestures (how do you punctuate Italian?), or personality. At the same time, Truss’s rant became a little tedious in the last couple of chapters. I kind of stopped listening towards the end; again, reminding me of my mother.

Truss starts with the general agony she goes through watching as the English language is used and abused by the world she lives in. She then takes on individual marks: the apostrophe, the comma, dashes and brackets, hyphens, and quotation marks (she calls them ‘inverted commas’). The last chapter is dedicated to the future of punctuation, and here she discusses the internet, texting, the trend towards informality, and smileys.

I am comfortable with my apostrophe usage; although, when touch-typing, I often misplace an apostrophe or even miss one. I blame this on a less-than-nimble pinky finger and on some recreational discoveries I was involved in during the week the apostrophe was introduced in grade-ten typing class.

Now, as far as commas are concerned, I am a little less than confident about my comma placements. I remember the first story I wrote, I was six or seven, and something in the plot involved a list of about 12 items. My mother showed me how to place a comma after each item except the last two, which were separated by an “and.” I was quite proud of my advanced punctuation knowledge. But then, in junior high, they started teaching us about clauses and subjects and predicates. We had just moved to Alberta, so I brushed it off as some weird bible-belt prairie thing. Where I came from people just wrote in sentences, simple as that. Strange that, as an avid reader, I didn’t make the association between the punctuation they were teaching me and the punctuation in the books I was reading.

I went through a lot of years in complete comma ignorance; totally unaware that I was abusing the poor little mark. I even earned a science degree to which I credit my writing skills and not my skills in the laboratory. Then I began to seriously pursue a career as a writer and I started seeing, quite consistently, the editorial comment “comma splice” scribbled on my prose. I didn’t know what a comma splice was. I began to lose confidence in my comma placements. Needless to say, I was quite excited when I reached the chapter in Truss’s book, “That’ll Do, Comma.”

According to Truss, missing the placement of a comma is one thing, it can often be considered a stylistic choice, but the misplacement of a comma is a sign of pure punctuational ignorance (especially if it’s a splice); unless, of course, you’re famous. I’m not famous, yet and I am willing to accept that. And I am willing to confess that I am a habitual splicer, now that I know what that means.

Truss taught me that:

· I can use a comma to join two complete sentences, if I use a conjunction like and, or, but, while, and yet.

· If I choose to leave out the conjunction, I need to make two complete sentences or use a semi-colon.

· I can place commas on either side of, or to separate on one end, “a weak interruption or a piece of additional information.”

I was glad that she laid out these rules for me and was starting to feel quite confident, but then she points out:

· In many cases nowadays, the commas bracketing so-called weak interruptions are becoming optional.(p.94)

· The comma before direct speech is “likely to lapse.” (p.89)

· Commas can be used to fill in gaps, “…missing words cunningly implied by the comma.” (p.89) (Unless, of course, those words are conjunctions.)

· When comma rules overlap, author and editor may have issues. I suggest you let the editor win.

I thought I had the dash figured out at one point, but now I’ve started question my dash application. I found it comforting to see that Truss is not entirely confident in the mark’s usage, either. Her chapter on hyphens was quite helpful -- I love the hyphen and how it pops up to make things like stainless-steel sinks from sinks made out of stainless steel.

Unfortunately, I felt that much of Truss’s final chapters ranted on a bit much. I also felt frustrated that Canadian usage is completely ignored. I had always thought we were the faithful little colony; writing with perfect “Queen’s English,” and frowning at any U.S. bastardizations. Apparently Truss assumed likewise. Now I see we were both wrong. We colonists have, in a typical Canadian way, absorbed a little bit of both American English and British English, with, no doubt, some French bits mixed into the pot.

If anything, Lynne Truss’s “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” has me paying more attention to my punctuation. I intend to read up on the subject: my plan being to learn the rules, use them to become famous, and then flaunt my abuse … (Sorry Mum.)

Worth Reading:

Bad Comma by Louis Menand