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Book Review: Punctuation Clarified with Humor in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”

WordPlay — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:41:34 +0000

By Lynn Truss

You’d be surprised how punctuation affects us all!

I used to live in Los Angeles, which has famously become a melting pot. I’ll leave it to more profound minds to discuss the ramifications and benefits of the blending of so many cultures in one place. I’ll just confine myself to the effect that blending has had on the language: I don’t like it and I’ll tell you why. It has nothing to do with xenophobia (an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or of that which is foreign or strange). In fact, I loved having access to so many cultures. What bothered me was the effect that multiple converging languages had on signage.

Petty? Probably. But I just couldn’t help extrapolate the effect signs written by non-English speakers — and left unchecked by sign company proofreaders — would have on future generations.

So you can imagine my joy at finding a book devoted to this and other niggling grammatical worries. Not only does Eats, Shoots & Leaves author Lynn Truss share my concern over errors made on signage; sheâ€™s raised the correction of them to high art. The subtitle of the book is â€œThe Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuationâ€ and she isnâ€™t kidding. If youâ€™ve ever cringed at a sign that read â€œBananaâ€™s for Saleâ€ (which of course should be the apostrophe-less â€œBananas for Sale”); youâ€™ll love this book.

A clue to the content of the book can be seen in its title, which comes from an old joke:

A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down and orders a sandwich. After he finishes eating, he pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter. He then stands up to leave.

“Hey!” shouts the manager. “Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you didn’t pay for your sandwich!”

The panda yells back at the manager, while throwing a badly punctuated wildlife manual at him, “Hey, Iâ€™m a panda! Look it up!”

The manager opens the manual and sees the following definition for the panda: “A large bearlike mammal with characteristic black and white markings, native to certain mountain forests in China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

This just shows you how much trouble one lone comma can create. Had the comma after â€œeatsâ€ been omitted, the panda would have just stuck to eating shoots and leaves and there wouldnâ€™t have been any gunplay.

Truss is so hopping mad about the abuse of language; she has stopped just short of advocating gunplay herself for language abusers. But she does it with such wit and insight; she makes you want to join in.

Here are just a few examples from the book that explain how we get ourselves into trouble with punctuation:

Commas run amuk

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

In the first example, the poor hypothetical woman doesnâ€™t amount to much without a man around. In the second, the man is the one left wanting. The meaning is completely reversed simply by replacing the first comma with a colon and moving the second comma.

Misplaced apostrophes

A sign hangs in front of a large childrenâ€™s playground that reads â€œGiant Kidâ€™s Playground.â€ Truss points out that itâ€™s no wonder no one uses the playground. The misplaced apostrophe strikes fear in the hearts of neighborhood children by announcing the presence of the Giant Kid who owns the playground.

Although Lynn Truss advocates for all of us to become soldiers in the punctuation war by packing correction fluid and stickers to both cover unwanted punctuation and introduce punctuation thatâ€™s missing; itâ€™s all done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Thatâ€™s what makes this book so special. Like the proverbial spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, Eats, Shoots & Leaves uses humor to distract us while poking us with a stick to jar us awake.

We hope you enjoyed this book review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. You might also want to read our other book reviews:

The Elements of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

You might also be interested in these holiday gifts for writers.

Book Review: The Chicago Manual of Style

carlajc — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:14:59 +0000

Available in print and versions, this resource is a practical guide to editorial style for writers. It’s hard to overestimate the influence this writing tool has had on wordsmiths everywhere. Although it was created to establish editorial standards for writers of academic works, the scope of its recommendations now cover the world of cyberspace.

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) book and Web site are divided into logical categories, which cover all aspects of writing and grammar, from punctuation to split infinitives to how to capitalize the president of the United State’s title. (And no, you don’t get to decide that based on your opinion of him.)

Some examples of the questions the CMOS answers:

Which is correct: Web site, web site, website or Website?
Should there be a comma after website in the question above?
Which is correct, Boston Tea Party or Boston tea party?
What is the proper format for citing an information source?

Although the online version offers quick answers to a lot of questions that can pop up while writing, it doesnâ€™t address all of them. You need the print version for that.

The Chicago Manual of Style online version is based on an annual subscription, but there is a 30-day free trial. Also, they offer a free FAQ that answers common grammar questions and doesn’t require registration to access.

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We hope you enjoyed this book review of The Chicago Manual of Style. You might also want to read our other book reviews:

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The Elements of Style

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

You might also be interested in these gifts for writers.

Internet Terms: How to Get Them Right

carlajc — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:09:46 +0000

For some reason, a lot of Internet terms have multiple versions. This is partly because Web-related words are relatively new and haven’t had a chance to settle into standard, agreed-upon forms. Another reason is that American English words in general have a tendency to morph over time. Proving that America really is a democracy, unacceptable word forms sometimes become acceptable over the long haul if enough people use them.

The following are the latest versions of some of the Internet terms we use all the time, based on rules set forth by The Chicago Manual of Style:

* Commands, icons, file names, keys and other technology-related terms
When writing about features in software or blogs, or on Web sites or keyboards, match the capitalization of the feature you’re mentioning. For example: “Hit Enter to access the page.” Enter is capitalized on keyboards, so it should be capitalized in this usage.

To further differentiate any of these terms, you can use italics, bold, a different font or quotes. If you’re writing about two types, you might want to use italics for one and bold for another: commands and file names. Whichever style you choose, be consistent.

* dot-com
This term should hyphenated, not written dot.com. (That would read dot dot com.) If used in a headline, capitalize both the d and the c: “Her Dot-Com Empire Made Her Millions Before She Jumped Out the Window.”

* e-mail, e-business, e-commerce, e-solutions, etc.
The e words should be lowercase and hyphenated, unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence. In that case, the e would be capitalized: “E-commerce provided a good living for him, but he preferred to dress like a homeless person anyway.”

* Internet
If you’re referring to the worldwide collection of Web sites, Internet should be capitalized. If you’re only referring to a network of computers, it should be lowercase.

* log in and its many variations
When you’re referring to logging into a site, the appropriate form is log on or log in (not logon or login). The same obviously applies to log off (not logoff). When you’re using the term as an adjective, however, it should be hyphenated: “She logged in on the log-in page.”

* online
This started as on-line, but it has now morphed into online — a perfect example of how language changes over time.

* pop-up
It’s appropriate to hyphenate the name for these annoying pages that disrupt your surfing.

* Web and Web site
At this point, Web is still treated as a proper noun, therefore both Web and Web site are capitalized. Since so many people already use web site or website, however, The Chicago Manual of Style editors predict that the uncapitalized form will eventually take over. Whichever form you use, be consistent.

* Video game names
Following the same rule as movie or book titles, video game titles should be italicized: “He sat in his chair and played Tomb Raider until his head fell off.”

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Book Review: The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

carlajc — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:31:30 +0000

By William Strunk and E.B. White

The Elements of Style manages to condense all the important rules of grammar into a package so small, you could mistake it for a drink coaster. Well, maybe it’s not that small. But small enough to give the impression that it wouldn’t cover enough territory to be worth buying. But it does and it is. That’s why writers have loved it since it was published for mass distribution in 1959.

When Professor William Strunk self-published the original version in 1919, it was even smaller than it is today. E.B. White (of Charlotte’s Web fame) was a student in Strunk’s Cornell University English class at the time, so he had to read The Elements of Style along with the rest of his classmates. After graduating, he promptly forgot about the book. He couldn’t have known then that 38 years later Macmillan would ask him to revise it for the college market and general trade.

A master of economical writing, White used not one word more than was necessary to spruce up Strunk’s original take on grammatical style. And that’s exactly the point of the book; it advocates a lean economy. Thankfully, it also allows for flexibility. The book still counsels to omit needless words and to use concrete, specific language instead of the abstract, but it also gives advice on using colloquialisms and avoiding fancy words. And the glossary alone is worth the price of admission. Especially for those of us (ahem) who can’t seem to remember the names of all the parts of speech.

The book covers a vast array of grammar questions, although White insists in his forward that The Elements of Style isn’t meant to be comprehensive. The topics it covers are too numerous to mention, but here are some:

Commonly misused words and expressions
Nouns used as verbs
Writing in a way that comes naturally to you
Not taking shortcuts at the cost of clarity
The number of the subject determines the number of the verb

White’s plainspoken authority intimidated me when I first read the book years ago. It helped me relax, though, when I read the forward in the fourth edition by White’s stepson, Roger Angell. He tells of observing White’s weekly efforts to come up with copy for the “Notes and Comments” page of The New Yorker. Angell said that sometimes after the copy was in the mail from Maine to New York, White would say, “It isn’t good enough. I wish it were better.” Experiencing this fundamental anxiety writers are prone to led him to infuse The Elements of Style with practical, no-nonsense advice. He probably even needed the reminders himself.

Although White died in 1985, his little book is still among a writer’s best friends. This is due in no small part to his understanding of a wordsmith’s plight.

We hope you enjoyed this book review on The Elements of Style. You might also want to read our other book reviews:

The Chicago Manual of Style

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

You might also be interested in these presents for writers.

Grammar Myth #2

carlajc — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:15:24 +0000

You can’t begin a sentence with and or but.

But of course you can. This is an example of another worn-out rule that needs to be debunked. I don’t even know how this one began, because people have been beginning sentences that way since the 10th century.

One caveat: even people who support the use of and and but to begin sentences believe that overuse leads to monotony. But what is overuse? Personally, I never begin a sentence with and and but more than once each in a paragraph. It’s my experience that more frequent use gives the writing a droning quality. And if I can go several paragraphs without using them in that way, so much the better. When used properly, however, beginning sentences with and and but can actually introduce a continuity and colloquial feeling to your writing.

Also, see grammar myth #1: You can’t end a sentence with a preposition.

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A Pre-posting Checklist: Stop in the Name of Blogs!

carlajc — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:44:40 +0000

Reviewing the following checklist before you submit each post can save you time and possibly embarrassment:

[ ] Have you run your spelling-check software?

[ ] Have you incorporated your keywords into your copy and headline?

[ ] Does your headline convey that your post contains content that benefits your readers?

[ ] Are there any words that might have questionable capitalization, punctuation or spelling? If so, look them up in a dictionary or The Chicago Manual of Style. Also, see our list of common word errors.

[ ] Does your post contain content that benefits your readers?

[ ] Have you written anything that might really offend someone (and therefore get you in trouble legally)?

[ ] Have you broken your text into paragraphs that arenâ€™t too long?

Special note to WordPress users:

Don’t take copy from a Microsoft Word document and put it into your blog. Doing so can create code problems. If you have copy from a Word doc in a WordPress post or page, do the following: (1.) copy it into Notepad, (2.) delete it from the WordPress interface and then (3.) paste the copy from Notepad back into WordPress. This will remove the bad code.

Another great solution is to use free Windows Live Writer software to create your blog posts.

If you have any tasks you think should be added to this list, please leave a comment.

Clipboard photo by Danny de Bruyne

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Writing Tools for Bloggers

A Short Checklist: Writing Tools for Bloggers

carlajc — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:12:47 +0000

Writing good blog posts isn’t difficult when you’re passionate about your topic. But that same passion can cause you to not notice if a few (or maybe even more than a few) errors slip through. If you want to raise your writing to the next level, the following tools can help:

* Your spelling-check software

This is your first line of defense against typos. That’s pretty obvious. But what you might not realize is that because aspects of the English language actually change more often than you’d think (a good example is the recent influx of Web-related terms), spelling software sometimes isn’t up-to-date. So, here’s an important caveat: if your software doesn’t contain a word, or if you suspect it’s displaying the wrong hyphenation, capitalization, etc., you should refer to a dictionary or the next tool below.

* The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)

Available in print and versions, this resource is a practical guide to editorial style. Although the online version offers easy answers to most questions that can pop up while writing, it doesnâ€™t address all of them. You need the print version for that.

Some examples of the questions TCMS answers:

Should president be capitalized when not used in front of someone’s name?
What is the proper format for citing an information source?
Which is correct: Web site, web site, website or Website?

The online version is based on an annual subscription, but there is a 30-day free trial. Also, they offer a free-for-everyone that answers common grammar questions.

Please also read our full review of this book.

* Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

Send, by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, is the first comprehensive guide to e-mail etiquette and standards. Since e-mail and the immediacy of blogging are closely related, awareness of the newly emerging rules regarding electronic communication can only benefit bloggers. Written with wit and style, Send is both a great resource and a fun read.

Please also read our full review of this book.

There are obviously plenty of other good resources out there, but using even just these three will help you significantly improve the quality of your writing.

Sometimes communing with others can help too. If you like to read, why not try a social networking site for book lovers or a general social networking site? Seeing how others write can often either inspire you or show you what not to do. And if the objective of your blogging is to make money, you owe it to yourself to learn how to make money online with Google Adsense. Many bloggers will tell you it’s the gold standard for monetizing a blog.

Grammar Myth #1: Ending a Sentence with a Preposition

carlajc — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:49:13 +0000

There are a lot of grammar myths floating around, perpetuated by well-meaning people who are, unfortunately, a little behind the times. But don’t blame them (or yourself, if you’re one of them); the English language is a work in progress. Rules that were actually taught in school years ago have been debunked, and others have taken their place. One rule that has no basis in fact but has been widely taught anyway is the prohibition against ending a sentence with a preposition. I used to buy into this one myself.

In case you arenâ€™t familiar with the term, a preposition is a word that expresses a relationship to the word(s) it precedes. Some examples are in, on, from, by, to, for and with. An example of a sentence that ends with a preposition would be:

â€œThere are some things I will not put up with.â€

To understand why the rule prohibiting this structure is inappropriate, consider how silly the sentence becomes when rewritten to move the preposition from the end:

â€œThere are some things up with which I will not put.â€

According to The Chicago Manual of Style, the rule about ending a sentence with a preposition stems from â€œan ill-founded superstition.â€ This superstition probably started with people who studied Latin, which has a grammatical structure that doesnâ€™t allow for sentences ending in prepositions.

Also, see grammar myth #2: You canâ€™t begin a sentence with and or but.

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