Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

by Lynne Truss

  One of the best descriptions of punctuation comes in a book entitled The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist (1989) by Thomas McCormack. He says the purpose of punctuation is “to tango the reader into the pauses, inflections, continuities and connections that the spoken line would convey”:

  Punctuation to the writer is like anatomy to the artist: He learns the rules so he can knowledgeably and controllédly depart from them as art requires. Punctuation is a means, and its end is: helping the reader to hear, to follow.

  And here’s a funny thing. If all these high moral arguments have had no effect, just remember that ignorance of punctuation can have rather large practical repercussions in the real world. In February 2003 a Cambridge politics lecturer named Glen Rangwala received a copy of the British government’s most recent dossier on Iraq. He quickly recognised in it the wholesale copying of a twelve-year-old thesis by American doctoral student Ibrahim al-Marashi, “reproduced word for word, misplaced comma for misplaced comma”. Oh yes. Rangwala noticed there were some changes to the original, such as the word “terrorists” substituted for “opposition groups”, but otherwise much of it was identical. In publishing his findings, he wrote:

  Even the typographical errors and anomalous uses of grammar are incorporated into the Downing Street document. For example, Marashi had written:

  “Saddam appointed, Sabir ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Duri ashead” …

  Note the misplaced comma. The UK officials who used Marashi’s text hadn’t. Thus, on page 13, the British dossier incorporates the same misplaced comma:

  “Saddam appointed, Sabir ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Duri as head” …

  So we ignore the rules of punctuation at our political peril as well as to our moral detriment. When Sir Roger Casement was “hanged on a comma” all those years ago, who would have thought a British government would be rumbled on a comma (and a “yob’s comma”, at that) ninety years further down the line? Doesn’t it feel good to know this, though? It does. It really does.

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  Bibliography

  Robert Allen, Punctuation, Oxford University Press, 2002

  Kingsley Amis, The King’s English: a guide to modern usage, HarperCollins, 1997

  Anon, A Treatise of Stops, Points, or Pauses, and of notes which are used in Writing and Print, 1680

  Tim Austin, The Times Guide to English Style and Usage, Times Books, 1999

  Nicholson Baker, “The History of Punctuation”, in The Size of Thoughts, Chatto & Windus, 1996

  — Room Temperature, Granta Books, 1990

  Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: the fate of reading in an electronic age, Ballantine, 1994

  Bill Bryson, Mother Tongue: the English language, Hamish Hamilton, 1990

  — Troublesome Words, third edition, Viking, 2001

  R. W. Burchfield, The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, revised third edition, Oxford University Press, 1998

  Rene J. Cappon, The Associated Press Guide to Punctuation, Perseus Publishing, 2003

  G. V. Carey, Mind the Stop: a brief guide to punctuation with a note on proof-correction, Cambridge University Press, 1939

  — Punctuation, Cambridge University Press, 1957

  David Crystal, Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge University Press, 1995

  — Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press, 2001

  Kay Cullen (ed.), Chambers Guide to Punctuation, Chambers, 1999

  H. W. Fowler, The King’s English, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1906

  Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The New Well-Tempered Sentence: a punctuation handbook for the innocent, the eager, and the doomed, Houghton Mifflin, 1993

  Ernest Cowers, Plain Words: a guide to the use of English, HMSO, 1948

  Cecil Hartley, Principles of Punctuation: or, The Art of Pointing, 1818

  Philip Howard, The State of the Language: English observed, Hamish Hamilton, 1984

  F. T. Husband and M. F. A. Husband, Punctuation, its Principles and Practice, Routledge, 1905

  Ben Jonson, English Grammar, 1640

  Graham King, Punctuation, HarperCollins, 2000

  Thomas McCormack, The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1989

  John McDermott, Punctuation for Now, Macmillan, 1990

  Malcolm Parkes, Pause and Effect: an introduction to the history of punctuation in the West, Scalar Press, 1992

  Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage: a guide to good English, Hamish Hamilton, 1947

  — You Have a Point There, Hamish Hamilton, 1953

  Joseph Robertson, An Essay on Punctuation, 1785

  Paul A. Robinson, “The Philosophy of Punctuation”, in Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters, Chicago University Press, 2002

  Paul Saenger, Space between Words: the origins of silent reading, Stanford University Press, 1997

  Reginald Skelton, Modern English Punctuation, Pitman, 1933

  Gertrude Stein, “Poetry and Grammar”, in Look at Me Now; and Here I Am: writings and lectures 1911-45, Peter Owen, 1967 (reissue imminent)

  William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, fourth edition, Longman, 2000

  Abraham Tauber (ed.), George Bernard Shaw on Language, Peter Owen, 1965

  James Thurber, The Years with Ross, Hamish Hamilton, 1959

  James Thurber (eds. Helen Thurber and Edward Weeks), Selected Letters of James Thurber, Hamish Hamilton, 1982

  Loreto Todd, Cassell’s Guide to Punctuation, Cassell & Co., 1995

  R. L. Trask, The Penguin Guide to Punctuation, Penguin, 1997

  William Vandyck, Punctuation Repair Kit, Hodder Headline, 1996

  Bill Walsh, Lapsing into a Comma: a curmudgeon’s guide to the many things that can go wrong in print – and how to avoid them, Contemporary Books, 2000

  Keith Waterhouse, English Our English (and How to Sing It), Viking, 1991

  — Sharon & Tracy & the Rest: the best of Keith Waterhouse in the Daily Mail, Hodder & Stoughton, 1992

  — Waterhouse on Newspaper Style, Viking, 1989