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Manny's Reviews > Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
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I have, for some reason, frequently been recommended Lynne Truss's book, though the reason escapes me; friends who have been exposed to my academic writing style are particularly prone to do so, and I have grown used to this strange phenomenon. I'm sure it says more about them - poor, unenlightened souls - than it does about me; for some reason, in particular, very few people understand what a wonderful punctuation mark the semi-colon is, and that it can, and very often should, be used to replace the period. Though there is also, of course, much to recommend the humble comma: the average sentence (not that I wish to imply that a sentence should content itself with merely being average) could be much improved by the addition of one or two, possibly more, of these handy little beasts.
No, I simply can't understand it; I suppose that a careful reading of Eats, Shoots and Leaves could, if I really tried, help me make my sentences a little longer, and assist me in festooning them with additional, glorious, punctuation. But why gild the lily?
____________________________________________
(based on a conversation earlier this morning with Jordan; apologies to Bob Dylan)
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
I'm not sleepy; and there ain't no place I'm going to;
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
In the jingle, jangle morning, I'll come, followin' you.
Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand;
Vanished from my hand;
Left me blindly here, to stand, but still not sleeping;
My weariness amazes me; I'm branded on my feet;
I have no one to meet;
And the ancient, empty street's too dead for dreaming.
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
I'm not sleepy; and there ain't no place I'm going to;
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
In the jingle, jangle morning, I'll come, followin' you.
____________________________________________
Seen yesterday in the window of a Geneva art gallery, this 1927 painting by Jean Arp entitled Point-Virgule ("semi-colon"):
I wanted to buy it on the spot. Unfortunately, a) the gallery was closed, b) a little internet research revealed that it last went for around 900,000 euros.
Damn. But still, if you feel like giving me a really expensive surprise present you'll now know what to do.
____________________________________________
From Pico Iyer's essay In Praise of the Humble Comma:
Spotted earlier this morning by notgettingenough in an article about Waterstones (formerly Waterstone's). I would have contributed.
____________________________________________
From today's Independent:
____________________________________________
From following day's Independent:
No, I simply can't understand it; I suppose that a careful reading of Eats, Shoots and Leaves could, if I really tried, help me make my sentences a little longer, and assist me in festooning them with additional, glorious, punctuation. But why gild the lily?
____________________________________________
(based on a conversation earlier this morning with Jordan; apologies to Bob Dylan)
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
I'm not sleepy; and there ain't no place I'm going to;
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
In the jingle, jangle morning, I'll come, followin' you.
Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand;
Vanished from my hand;
Left me blindly here, to stand, but still not sleeping;
My weariness amazes me; I'm branded on my feet;
I have no one to meet;
And the ancient, empty street's too dead for dreaming.
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
I'm not sleepy; and there ain't no place I'm going to;
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
In the jingle, jangle morning, I'll come, followin' you.
____________________________________________
Seen yesterday in the window of a Geneva art gallery, this 1927 painting by Jean Arp entitled Point-Virgule ("semi-colon"):
I wanted to buy it on the spot. Unfortunately, a) the gallery was closed, b) a little internet research revealed that it last went for around 900,000 euros.
Damn. But still, if you feel like giving me a really expensive surprise present you'll now know what to do.
____________________________________________
From Pico Iyer's essay In Praise of the Humble Comma:
A comma... catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.____________________________________________
Spotted earlier this morning by notgettingenough in an article about Waterstones (formerly Waterstone's). I would have contributed.
____________________________________________
From today's Independent:
____________________________________________
From following day's Independent:
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Reading Progress
February 14, 2010
– Shelved
January 31, 2016
– Shelved as:
to-read
Comments Showing 1-50 of 67 (67 new)
message 1:
by
notgettingenough
(last edited Feb 14, 2010 04:00AM)
(new)
Feb 14, 2010 03:59AM
I hope she trusses you up; [sic:] and beats your semi-colon addiction out of you.
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Yes, Manny, the semi colon is the secret to compound, complex sentences.
Manny wrote: "...Lynne Truss's book..."Woah! Way impressed. Most people still think it should be Truss'. Why anyone would think your punctuation needs work is beyond me; you stick your semi-colon up their colon!
Whitaker wrote: "Manny wrote: "...Lynne Truss's book..."Woah! Way impressed. Most people still think it should be Truss'. Why anyone would think your punctuation needs work is beyond me; you stick your semi-colon up their colon"
Ha ha. But you don't understand. It doesn't need work, it needs unwork.
If the reason for reading the book escapes you at the moment, read the review by Bobbi Sheahan here on goodreads. She's got it spot on. Anybody with interest in language has a proper laugh whilst reading this book. It won't teach you revolutionary new things but you get assured that there are sympathetic souls out there, who actually care about being understood.
So I'm going to get about double that for the colon, am I? Excuse me. Just trotting down to the hardware store for the balsa wood...
You guys are just trying to wind me up; but I refuse to be provoked!
In my experience, French people find the word "semi-colon" to be hilarious. Can Truss explain that?
Robert wrote: "In my experience, French people find the word "semi-colon" to be hilarious. Can Truss explain that?"As you can see, the French word is the more logical point-virgule, i.e. period-comma, so "semi-colon" does indeed sound odd. Not least when you consider that colon usually means "colonial"...
Aha! I really didn't learn enough French last year.
yes I've just recommended you a book, and it may say more about me than you, Manny. http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
If you're wondering why, it's because of the Nabokovian flourishes, the echoes of 'Pale Fire' which I know you like, and not because the hero is a pedant.
Thank you Alan! It looks good... might read it. And hey, I'm proud of being a pedant, but it was anyway nice of you to issue that clarification.
I do think you'd like it. I was wondering about that sentence - I've just recommended you a book - shouldn't it be - a book to you - ? I need Lyn Truss's help...
I think both forms are correct? When the dative object of a ditransitive verb is a pronoun, it can either be realized as a simple argument preceding the direct object or alternately as a to-PP.You can see I'm not kidding about the pride :)
uuhuhfnvenv[ejh q=. no no no
"The dative object" is the person you have a crush on, right?
Robert wrote: ""The dative object" is the person you have a crush on, right?"No, that's the sex object.
No one seems to know grammar any more. What do they teach them in schools these days?
Grammar is my parent's mother, right?
I was taught it alright. I went to Grammar School. I vaguely remember those lessons about transitive verbs etc but have no idea what it's all about now... that's why I had to read Truss. Enjoyed it, but have now forgotten all those rules again. Probably just me getting old.
I loved this book! I was laughing out loud and reading passages to anyone who would listen. I strongly recommend it. Of course, as a boss, I diagrammed the sentences of subordinates...
This book has been donated to my charity shop more times that I can remember. I've browsed, thought about it some, but then always put it on sale, not tempted. My punctuation is dire, especially when I'm on WORD & constantly being corrected, but I shrug and tell the app exactly what I think of its 'helpfulness'. Let us not forget, Cormack McCarthy wrote No Country for Old Men with famine-like shortage of punctuation and it was a pretty darned good book.
Julia wrote: "Let us not forget, Cormack McCarthy wrote No Country for Old Men with famine-like shortage of punctuation and it was a pretty darned good book."Ha! Reading it now. I agree on both counts :)
PS LMAO at 'dative object'/'sex object'. Keep it up.
Your satirical comment in making your point is appreciated by me. If you do not know about the Gunning fog index, look it up.The best writing course I ever took was short, perhaps 10 hours total class time, and no formal homework. It was called Effective Writing, and it was taught by a defense contractor to selected employees.
You may be pleased to hear that Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (German edition) contains 850+ semi-colons; this coming from a nobel-prize winner should be proof enough of its, the semi-colons's, significance.Also, Arno Schmidt invented two more punctuation characters: the question-comma and the exclamation-comma (sorry no Unicode-characters for that yet).
I assure you that the hope of being able to read Mann in the original is one of the things that's making me work on my German! Though I'm stopping to smell the flowers en route... Preußler is very fine.
I like semi-colons!! They're fun, they add to the sentence, they help you separate out sentences into structures and forms most people could only dream of! I find it sad that, in this day and age, people are dropping all useful bits of punctuation because of the much prefered "text speech" that is coming to the fore; it saddens me further that, if I were only just a little younger, I might revel in this new-found grammatical "freedom", too.
When these people are a little older, they will realize that freedom is the freedom to use a semicolon when you decide you need one.
Lynne Truss isn't just a grammar goddess; she also wrote a wonderful but very weird mystery, too, called Cat out of Hell.
Ha! I had never heard of it. It does indeed look like fun.
Vonnegut on the semicolon: "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."As usual he's on point.
It is a very divisive punctuation mark. In Carina Burman's novel Den tionde sånggudinnan, the heroine visits a town in Germany where there's a statue commemorating the man who's supposed to have invented the semicolon. I am not sure if this detail is genuine or satirical.
Stian wrote: "Vonnegut on the semicolon: "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've..."On the other hand, it's impossible for a hermaphrodite to be a transvestite, so maybe he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about...
You are always so logical, Robert! Are you sure you're not part Vulcan?
Manny wrote: "You are always so logical, Robert! Are you sure you're not part Vulcan?"I don't think so, but maybe that's the cause of Asperger's?
There's the makings of a paper here. "Mr Spock: A Case of Very High Functioning Aspergers". Now that you mention it, it does seem extremely plausible. Perhaps he can become the official mascot of the Aspergers Society, if there is one?
Manny wrote: "There's the makings of a paper here. "Mr Spock: A Case of Very High Functioning Aspergers". Now that you mention it, it does seem very plausible. Perhaps he can become the official mascot of the ..."
I shall have to look in to the matter.
The inventor of the semi-colon is considered Aldus Manutius the Older (1449-1515) from Venice, because the first semi-colon appeared in his work De Aetna. He also invented the italic style, hence the name.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus_M...
I found his name at once, but I don't think it's the one in the Swedish novel...
This articlehttp://elm-asse-kultur.de/html/person...
mentions Justus Georg Schottelius as the inventor. I didn't find any statue of him yet, but it's very well possible there is one. He made outstanding contributions to the German language:
A Detailed Account of the Standard German Language (1663).
I have a feeling it was Schottelius! I'll see if I can check.
Will the day ever come that speech enabled software can come close to imitating your semi-colon samba?
Speech synthesizers are getting better at prosody...
Manny wrote: "As you can see, the French word is the more logical point-virgule, i.e. period-comma"In German there is the synonym Strickpunkt (dash-dot) for semi-colon.
Wikipedia has a graph showing the capricious history of the semi-colon in English texts between 1500 and 2008:
The above graph has been created using the Google Ngram viewer. I let it perform a search for question marks in the English text corpus between 1950 and 2008. Results here:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph...
Seems like the count is more or less steadily rising. Does this mean there are ever more questions?
Matt wrote: "The above graph has been created using the Google Ngram viewer. I let it perform a search for question marks in the English text corpus between 1950 and 2008. Results here:
https://books.google.co..."
Who knows????????????????????????????????????????
Those graphs are just awesome! Perhaps there are many more words that can describe it, like stupendous, and phenomenal, but I'll stick with the 'ol American favourite!
