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

published	2006 by Gotham
first published	2003
binding	Paperback
isbn	1592402038 (isbn13: 9781592402038)
pages	240
description	We all know the basics of punctuation. Or do we? A look at most neighborhood signage tells a different story. Through sloppy usage and low standards o...more [close] We all know the basics of punctuation. Or do we? A look at most neighborhood signage tells a different story. Through sloppy usage and low standards on the Internet, in e-mail, and now text messages, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with. A panda walks into a cafe. 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-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots, and leaves." So, punctuation really does matter, even if its only occasionally a matter of life and death.
date added	12-09-06 edit book

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Grammar Mavens	1	02/10/2008 01:31AM

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Danger rated it:

02/12/08

bookshelves: language, reference-or-non-fiction

Read in January, 2008

recommended to Danger by: Mike
recommends it for: Those who are really good at English and frustrated, and those who suck terribly and need pointers.

Amusing. Pretentious. British. It shook my confidence, until I realized that I knew all of this from the get-go, and have intentionally been ignoring it for the sake of art. I write like I think, and I think in text. Defying convention has always been my strong point, after all.
Even then, I think I do a better job at writing in English as it is meant to be written than most people, and I can’t deny that it was gratifying to read a book by someone even more hung up on the finer points ...more Amusing. Pretentious. British. It shook my confidence, until I realized that I knew all of this from the get-go, and have intentionally been ignoring it for the sake of art. I write like I think, and I think in text. Defying convention has always been my strong point, after all.
Even then, I think I do a better job at writing in English as it is meant to be written than most people, and I can’t deny that it was gratifying to read a book by someone even more hung up on the finer points of language than I. It really put things back into proportion for me.

“Having grown up as readers of the printed word (and possibly even scribblers in margins), we may take for granted the processes involved in the traditional activity of reading – so let us remind ourselves. The printed word is presented to us in a linear way, with syntax supreme in conveying the sense of the words in their order. We read privately, mentally listening to the writer’s voice and translating the writer’s thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first place entails an active pursuit of understanding. Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority. Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.

All these conditions for reading are overturned by the new technologies. Information is presented to us in a non-linear way, through an exponential series of lateral associations. The internet is a public “space” which you visit, and even inhabit; its product is inherently impersonal and disembodied. Scrolling documents is the opposite of reading: your eyes remain static, while the material flows past. Despite all the opportunities to “interact”, we read material from the internet (or CD-roms, or whatever) entirely passively because all the interesting associative thinking has already been done on our behalf. Electronic media are intrinsically ephemeral, are open to perpetual revision, and work quite strenuously against any sort of historical perception. The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable value. Finally, you can’t write comments in the margin of your screen to be discovered by another reader fifty years down the line.”

First off, my “inner stickler” would like to point out that it should be “CD-ROM”, as it’s actually an acronym for “compact disc- read only memory”. “Internet” should be capitalized, even though common usage has recently dictated otherwise.
Second, didn’t she just write an entire book about how editing itself is a crapshoot and you can’t really put your faith in it too much? We’ve all seen typographical errors in books; even Truss mentions them somewhere around the beginning of the book.
However, I think her thesis is sound. We are seeing a general decay, not only in the quality of the language, but in the quality of the minds which experience and produce it. The Internet has many useful research outlets, but for the most part, it goes one step further in making media something which affects us, and not something which we effect. Odd, considering that the entire concept of self-publication should do just the opposite. I wrote a good rant about this once, but I think it’s been lost to the selfsame Internet by which it was inspired.
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Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

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