Queen’s English

Lynne Truss has written a book on punctuation that has been at the top of the best sellers’ lists in England for nearly two years, and in the couple of months since its introduction here in March 2004, it has been meteoric on our lists.

For its wonderfully sly title alone, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, it deserves its success. (If the three words are treated as verbs, it has a meaning altogether different from the same words as nouns. Then remove the comma, and depending on whether leaves is a noun or verb, we have two more meanings.)

Ms. Truss’ subtitle “The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” is somewhat misleading; though she quotes liberally from critics of rigid grammatical structure (leading the reader to assume she agrees), in the end she supports most of the traditional rules. Given the option though, she does seem ready to jettison excessive punctuation where the meaning of a writing remains unaffected.

Her wit (very definitely English, often bawdy) is pervasive, and at the same time she makes a serious case for structure in our mother tongue. She is properly appalled by what passes for communication on the internet; all of us receive e-mails which are loaded with uncapitalized proper names, possessive nouns without apostrophes, run-on sentences, dots dots dots (ellipses), and dashes dashes dashes. (I have a particular aversion to the use of “i” when people refer to themselves. Are we in that much of a hurry?)

I would like to believe that Ms. Truss’ success demonstrates a great thirst in general for a ready reference guide to proper grammar, but not one that suffocates. When we approach a grammatical crossroad (should that be lie or lay?), there is comfort in the guidance a book like this gives us – – without taking itself too seriously. Even though Ms. Truss says she is not a grammarian, punctuation is an integral part of grammar, and she has obviously found her forum.