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

Thanks are due to the many writers on punctuation who did all the hard work of formulating the clear rules I have doubtless muddied in this book. G. V. Careys Mind the Stop (1939) and Eric Partridges You Have a Point There (1953) are acknowledged classics; modern writers such as David Crystal, Loreto Todd, Graham King, Keith Waterhouse, Tim Austin, Kingsley Amis, Philip Howard, Nicholson Baker, William Hartston and R. L. Trask were all inspirational. Special thanks go to Cathy Stewart, Anne Baker and Gillian Forrester; also to Penny Vine, who set me off on this journey in the first place. Nigel Hall told me the panda joke; Michael Handelzalts told me about the question mark in Hebrew; and Adam Beeson told me where to find the dash on my keyboard. Learned copy-editors have attempted to sort out my commas and save me from embarrassment. I thank them very much. Where faults obstinately remain, they are mine alone. Finally, I would like to thank Andrew Franklin for his encouraging involvement along the way, and the hundreds of readers who generously responded to articles in The Daily Telegraph, The Author and Writers News. It was very good to know that I was not alone.

If Lynne Truss were Catholic Id nominate her for sainthood. As it is, thousands of English teachers from Maine to Maui will be calling down blessings on her merry, learned head for the gift of her book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Its a book about punctuation. Punctuation, if you dont mind! (I hesitated over that exclamation mark, and its all her doing.) The book is so spirited, so scholarly, those English teachers will sweep all other topics aside to get to, you guessed it, punctuation. Parents and children will gather by the fire many an evening to read passages on the history of the semicolon and the terrible things being done to the apostrophe. Once the poor stepchild of grammar (is that comma OK here?), punctuation will emerge as the Cinderella of the English language.

There are heroes and villains in this book. Oh, you never thought such could be possible? You never thought a book on punctuation could contain raw sex? Well, here is Lynne Truss bemoaning the sad fact she never volunteered to have the babies of Aldus Manutius the Elder (14501515). (Help! In that last sentence does the period go inside the parenthesis/bracket or outside?) If you actually know who Aldus was you get the door prize and, perhaps, Ms. Truss will have your babies.

Aldus Manutius the Elder invented the italic typeface and printed the first semicolon. His son, yes, Aldus the Younger, declared in 1566, that the main object of punctuation was the clarification of syntax.

Ho hum, you say or, if youre American, Big deal. Very well. Youre entitled to your ignorance, but pause a moment, dear reader, and imagine this page of deathless prose, the one youre reading, without punctuation.

In the villain department I think greengrocers get a bad rap. No, this doesnt come from Ms. Truss. She merely notes their tendency to stick in apostrophes where apostrophes had never gone before. I feel no such sympathy for the manager of my local supermarket who must have a cellarful of apostrophes he doesnt know what to do with: Eggs, $1.29 a doz., for heavens sake! (In the U.S. its heavens sakes.)

Eggs, and its not even a possessive.

Lynne Truss has a great soul and I wouldnt mind drinking tea out of a saucer with herwhen you read the book youll see what I meanexcept that, on occasion, she lets her Inner Stickler get out of hand. She tells us of a shopkeeper in Bristol who deliberately stuck ungrammatical signs in his window as a ruse to draw people into the shop; they would come to complain, and he would then talk them into buying something. Then she flings down the gauntlet:... he would be ill-advised to repeat this ploy once my punctuation vigilantes are on the loose. (Notice my masterly use of the ellipsis. Hold your admiration. I owe it all to Lynne.)

I would have that Bristol shopkeeper knighted. Imagine the conversations in his shop. Irate customers skewering him on points of grammar. You could write a play, a movie on this shopkeeper. Track him down, Lynne. Bring him to London. Present him at court.

On second thought, present Lynne Truss at court. The Queen needs cheering up, and what better way than to wax sexy with Ms. Truss over Aldus Manutius, the Elder and the Younger, their italics, their proto-semicolon.

O, to be an English teacher in the Age of Truss.

Frank McCourt
January 2004

Lynne Trusss Eats, Shoots & Leaves has been reprinted exactly as it was in its original British edition, complete with British examples, spellings and, yes, punctuation. There are a few subtle differences between British and American punctuation which the author has addressed in her preface to the North American edition. Any attempt at a complete Americanization of this book would have been akin to an effort to Americanize the Queen of England: futile and, this publisher feels, misguided. Please enjoy this narrative history of punctuation as it was meant to be enjoyed, bone-dry humour and cultural references intact, courtesy of Lynne Truss and all of us here at Gotham Books.

To be clear from the beginning: no one involved in the production of Eats, Shoots & Leaves expected the words runaway and bestseller would ever be associated with it, let alone upon the cover of an American edition. Had the Spirit of Christmas Bestsellers Yet to Come knocked at the rather modest front door of my small London publisher in the summer of 2003 and said, I see hundreds of thousands of copies of your little book about punctuation sold before Christmas. It will be debated in every national newspaper and mentioned, yea, even in the House of Lords, where a woman named Lady StrangeI kid thee notwill actually tell the panda joke, Im afraid the Spirit would have been sent whiffling off down Clerkenwell Road with the sound of merry, disbelieving laughter ringing in its ears. Lady Strange, we would have repeated, chuckling, for hours afterwards. Honestly, what are these prophetic spirits of old London town