Eats, shoots

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Eats, shoots leavesThe Zero Tolerance Approach
to Punctuation

• by
• Lynne Truss, 2004

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A panda walks into a café. 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. Im 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-while bear-like mammal, native to
China. Eats, shoots and leaves.
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To the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers
of St. Petersburg who, in 1995, demanded to be
paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for
letters, and thereby directly precipitated the
first Russian Revolution
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Punctuation is a system of printers marks that
had aided the clarity of the written word for the
past half-millennium, and if its time had come to
be replaced, lets just use this moment to
celebrate what an elegant and imaginative job it
did while it had the chance.
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Caring about matters of language is unfortunately
generally associated with small-minded people,
but that doesnt make it a small issue.
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The Seventh Sense

• Come inside, for CDs, VIDEOs, DVDs, and
  BOOKs
• Two Weeks Notice
• Can you spare any old records
• eight items or less
• The judges decision is final

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(No Transcript)
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While some people look in horror at a badly
punctuated sign, the world carries on around us,
blind for our plight. Those people are like the
little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead
people, except that they can see dead punctuation.
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Punctuation Defined

• The basting that holds the fabric of language in
  shape.
• The traffic signals of language they tell us to
  slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
• The courtesy designed to help readers to
  understand a story without stumbling.
• The line along which the train (composition,
  style, writing) must travel if it isnt to run
  away with its driver.

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When punctuation is not used

• Language come apart, obviously, and all the
  buttons fall off.
• Words bang into each other and everyone ends up
  in Minehead.
• A sentence no longer holds the door open for you
  to walk in , but drops it in your face as you
  approach.
• You and your writing will go off-line with your
  words dead and scattered around.

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• Punctuation marks are traditionally
• either separators
• or terminators.

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Between Staunch and Flexible

• Punctuation is being governed
• Two-thirds by rule and one-third by personal
  taste
• G.V. Carey, Mind the Stop,
• Cambridge University Press, 1939

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Examples

• A woman without her man is nothing
• A woman, without her man, is nothing
• A woman without her, man is nothing

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Examples

• It is under these circumstances that we feel
  constrained to call upon you to come to our aid
  should a disturbance arise here the circumstances
  are so extreme that we cannot but believe that
  you and the men under you will not fail to come
  to the rescue of people who are so situated.
• Put the period after the word aid once then
  after here and see the change in meaning.

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Examples

• Charles the First walked and talked half an hour
  after his head was cut off
• Charles the First walked and talked. Half an
  hour after, his head was cut off

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Why a cat is not a comma?

• A cat has claws
• at the ends of its paws.
• A commas a pause
• at the end of a clause.

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The Tractable Apostrophe

• Means in Greek turning away
• and hence omission or elision
• In the 16th century
• First picked up and used to mark dropped letters
• In the 17th century
• Intruded before the s in singular possessive
  cases
• the girls dress
• In the 18th century
• Put after plural possessives as well the girls
  dresses

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Apostrophe's Tasks

• Indicates a possessive
• Singular noun
• The boys hat
• Plural without s
• The childrens playground
• Regular plural
• The boys hats

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Apostrophes Tasks

• Indicates time or quantity
• In one weeks time
• Indicates omission of figures in dates
• The summer of 68
• Indicates the omission of letters
• We cant go to Joburg
• Its your turn
• Its got very cold

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The Contractive and the Possessive

• The rule is the word its (with apostrophe)
  stands for it is or it has.
• If the word does not stand for it is or it
  has then what you require is its.
• Thank God its Friday
• Thank God its Friday

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No matter that you have a Ph.D. and have read
all of Henry James twice. If you still persist
in writing, Good food at its best, you
deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on
the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.
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Apostrophes Tasks

• Features in Irish names
• ONeill and OCasey
• The O in the Irish names is an anglicisation of
  ua, meaning grandson.
• Indicates the plurals of letters
• How many fs are there in Fulham?

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Apostrophes Tasks

• Indicates plurals of words
• What are the dos and donts?
• Are there too many buts and ands at the
  beginning of sentences these days?

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The Lifted Task

• It no longer has to appear in the plurals
  abbreviations (MPs) or plural dates (1980s).

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Apostrophes Tasks

• Abolish the apostrophe
• and it will be necessary,
• before the hour is up,
• to reinvent it.

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Thatll Do, Comma

• Thurber and Ross
• Why to you have a comma in the sentence, After
  dinner, the men went into the living room?
• This particular comma, was Rosss way of giving
  the men time to push back their chairs and stand
  up.

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No dogs please

• Only one person in a thousand
• bothers to point out that
• actually the statement
• is an indefensible generalization,
• since many dogs
• do please.

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Thatll Do, Comma

• Means in Greek a piece cut off
• Adopted in the 16th century
• Purpose was to guide actors, chanters and
  readers-aloud indicating the pauses, accentuating
  matters of sense and sound.
• Aldus Manutius the Elder invented the italic
  typeface and printed the first semicolon

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Thatll Do, Comma

• Aldus Manutius the Younger stated in 1566 that
  the main object of punctuation was the
  clarification of syntax.
• Two distinct function
• Illuminate grammar of a sentence
• Point up rhythm, direction, pitch, tone and flow.

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Commas Tasks

• Commas for lists
• The four refreshing fruit flavors of Opal Fruits
  are orange, lemon, strawberry and lime.

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Commas Tasks

• The Oxford comma
• The flag is red, white, and blue
• I went to the chemist, Marks Spencer, and
  NatWest.
• They tell us to slow down, notice this, take a
  detour, and stop.
• (three or four instructions)

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Commas Tasks

• List of Adjectives
• Use the comma where an and would be appropriate.
• It was a dark, stormy night.
• He was a tall, bearded man.
• Do not use a comma for
• It was an endangered white rhino
• The grand old Duke of York had ten thousand men.

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Commas Tasks

• Commas for joining
• Complete sentences with conjunctions
• as and, or, but, while and yet
• The boys wanted to stay up until midnight, but
  they grew tired and fell asleep.
• I thought I had the biggest bag of fruits, yet
  Cathy proved me wrong.

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Commas Tasks

• Commas before direct speech
• The queen said, Doesnt anyone know its my
  birthday?
• Commas setting off interjections
• Stop, or Ill scream.

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Commas Tasks

• Commas that come in pairs
• (weak interruption)
• I am, of course, going steadily nuts
• Nicholas Nickleby, published in 1839, uses a
  great many commas.
• (should be removed)
• The leading stage director, Nicholas Hytner, has
  been appointed to the Royal National Theatre.

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Commas Tasks

• Important grammatical point
• The people in the queue who managed to get
  tickets were very satisfied.
• Some people did not get tickets
• The people in the queue, who managed to get
  tickets, were very satisfied.
• Everyone got tickets

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A Grammatical Point

• If the clause between the commas is defining,
  commas are not needed.
• The Highland Terries that live in our street
  arent cute at all
• The Highland Terries, when they are barking, are
  a nightmare.

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Commas Big Final Rule

• Dont use commas like a stupid person
• Leonora walked on her head, a little higher than
  usual.
• The driver managed to escape from the vehicle
  before it sank and swam to the river-bank.
• Dont guess, use a timer or watch.
• The convict said the judge is mad.

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Airs and Graces The Colon and Semicolon

• They are about expectation and elastic energy.
  Like internal springs, they propel you forward in
  a sentence towards more information.
• Semicolon lightly propels you in any direction
  related to the foregoing.
• The colon nudges you along lines already subtly
  laid down.

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The Colon and Semicolon

• The colon delivers the goods that have been
  invoiced in the preceding words.
• Tom has only one rule in life never eat anything
  bigger than your head.
• I pulled out all the stops with kerry-Anne I
  used a semicolon.
• I loved Opal fruits as a child no one else did.
• You can do it and you will do it.

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The Colon and Semicolon

• Man proposes God disposes.
• I find fault with only three things in this story
  or yours, Jenkins the beginning, the middle and
  the end.
• Colons introduce the part of a sentence that
  exemplifies, restates, elaborates, undermines,
  explains or balances the preceding part.

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The Colon and Semicolon

• Colons start lists (especially lists using
  semicolons)
• They set off book and film sub-titles from the
  main titles
• Ghandi II The Mahatma Strikes Back

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The Colon and Semicolon

• The main place for a semicolon is between two
  related sentences where there is no conjunction
  such as and or but.
• It was the baying of an enormous hound it came
  from over there!
• I remember him when he couldnt write his own
  name on a gate now hes Prime Minister

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Indispensable Semicolon

• Fares were offered to Corfu, the Greek island
  Morocco Elba, in the Mediterranean and Paris.
  Margaret thought about it. She had been to Elba
  once and found it dull to Morocco, and found it
  too colorful.
• Special Policeman Semicolon (for comma fights)

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The Colon and Semicolon

• Sense changes with punctuation
• Tom locked himself in the shed. England lost to
  Argentina.
• Tom locked himself in the shed England lost to
  Argentina.
• Tom locked himself in the shed England lost to
  Argentina.

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Cutting a Dashexclamation mark, dash, italic,
question mark

• Exclamation mark is used to salute, admire,
  emphasize, irony, e-mail salutations.
• Whereas a dash is used to connect (or separate)
  sentences, the hyphen is used to connect (or
  separate) individual words.
• Italics are used for,
• Titles of books, emphasis of certain words,
  foreign words, examples on language

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Cutting a Dashexclamation mark, dash, italic,
question mark

• Question mark is used when the question is
  direct.
• What is the capital of Belgium?
• What was the point of all this sudden interest in
  Brussels, he wondered.
• The ellipsis appears in e-mails and shorthand,
  meaning more to come.

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Double Dashes

• Bracketing device
• He was (I still cant believe this!) trying to
  climb in the window.
• He was -I still cant believe this!- trying to
  climb in the window.
• Can you tell the difference?

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Types, Shapes, Names of Brackets

• Round brackets (called parentheses in US)
• Square brackets called brackets in US
• Brace brackets derived from maths
• Angle brackets ltlinguistic and technical usesgt
• Angle shape the earliest to appear
• Brackets (as for a bookshelf ) lift up a section
  of the sentence, holding it above the rest.

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Uses of Brackets

• Add information, clarify, explain and illustrate.
• Starburst (formerly known as Opal Fruits) are
  available in all corner shops.
• Square brackets for clarifying direct quote, and
  enclosing ellipsis
• She had used Tom Jones for far too many
  examples by this stage.

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Ellipsis (or three dots)

• Very specific uses
• Indicate word missing from a quoted passage
• Trail off in a intriguing matte

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A Little Used Mark (Hyphen)

• Name comes from the Greek.
• Uses of the hyphen,
• Avoid ambiguity (re-formed, re-mark)
• Spell out numbers (thirty-two, forty-nine)
• Link nouns with nouns (London-Brighton train)
• Link adjectives to adjectives (American-French
  relations)
• Noun phrase qualifies another noun
  (stainless-steel kitchen, corrugate-iron roof)

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A Little Used Mark (Hyphen)

• Uses of hyphen (continued)
• Certain prefixes (anti-Apartheid, quasi-steady)
• Spell out certain words (K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M)
• Avoid letter collision (de-ice, shell-like)
• Indicate unfinished word that continues on the
  next line
• Hesitation and stammering (I reached the
  w-w-w-w-watering can)
• Qualify a hyphenated phrase beforehand (He was a
  two- or three-year-old.)

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Merely Conventional Signs

• Emotions are the proper name for smileys.
• -) happy -( sad
• -) winking -r tongue sticking
• / mixed up lt-) dunce (stupid)
• - pouting -O surprise
• Text message and verbal shorthand
• CU B4 8?

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Computers, Reading and Writing

• With text messaging and emailing becoming such
  compulsive universal activities, reading and
  writing are now more a fact of everyday life than
  they have ever been.
• The human linguistic faculty seems to be in good
  shape. The arrival of Netspeak is showing us
  homo loquens at its best David Crystal

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A Last Word

• Proper punctuation is both the sign and cause of
  clear thinking.
• We should fight like tigers to preserve
  punctuation, and we should start now.
• The purpose of punctuation is to tango the
  reader into the pauses, inflections, continuities
  and connections that the spoken line would
  convey. Thomas McCormack.